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WAR AND CHILDREN

War and ChildrenBYANNA FREUDANDDOROTHY T. BURLINGHAMIMEDICAL WAR BOOKS1943

COPYRIGHT 194Jy»- ruALL RIGHTS RESERVEDSocial- 1HQF?1MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICABY ERNST WILLARD. NEW YORK. N. Y.

U Of MDetroit. i < *,< -CONTENTSPART IINTRODUCTION 1Survey of Psychological Reactions 15Reaction to Destruction 20Five Types of Air-Raid Anxiety 25Reaction to Evacuation 37Mother and Child Relationship in the Early Stages 54Normal and Abnormal Outlets 64Forms of Gratification^ 76Practical Conclusions — 83PART IIREPORTS 89Hampstead Nursery 93Shock of Separation 97Further Observations 103-Reaction to Air-Raids 114Parents and Children 122The Country House 130Children in the Country 135Parent Understanding 142Reunion after Separation 150Artificial Families 156Conflicting Attitudes 162Children's Reactions to War 175CONCLUSIONS 185

The Foster Parents' Plan for War Children has been workingwith children since 1936 when Spain's children weresubjected to bombardments. Later we worked in Francecaring for French, Polish, Dutch and Belgian children.France fell we took up our work in England.WhenMore than 20,000 cases of children have been studied byour staff members since our work began ; at no time havewe had any work to compare with the book, War and ChildrenBy Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham.Miss Freud and Mrs. Burlingham direct three wartimenurseries in England for the Foster Parents' Plan. The materialfor the book was gathered at the nurseries, which are maintainedby voluntary contributions from America.WAR AND CHILDREN is an outstanding contributionin the field of psychology and is as valuable to those workingwith children on the home front as it is to those working withchildren in actual bombed areas.It is a record of children in modern war told honestlyand completely, by two of the world's outstanding childpsychologists.EDNA BLUE,Executive-ChairmanFoster Parents' Plan for War Children, Inc.

INTRODUCTIONWork in War Nurseries is based on theidea that the care and education of youngchildren should not take second place in wartimeand should not be reduced to wartimelevel. Adults can live under emergency conditionsand, if necessary, on emergency rations.But the situation in the decisive years of bodilyand mental development is entirely different.It has already been generally recognised, andprovision has been made accordingly, that thelack of essential foods, vitamins, etc., in earlychildhood will cause lasting bodily malformationin later years, even if harmful consequencesare not immediately apparent. It isnot generally recognised that the same istrue for the mental development of the child.Whenever certain essential needs are not fulfilled,lasting psychological malformations willbe the consequence. These essential elementsare: the need for personal attachment, foremotional stability, and for permanency ofeducationalinfluence.War conditions, through the inevitablebreaking-up of family life, deprive children ofthe natural background for their emotional andmental development. The present generation11

of children has, therefore, little chance to buildup itsfuture psychological health and normalitywhich will be needed for the reconstructionof the world after the war. To counteractthese deficiencies, war-time care of childrenhas to be more elaborate and more carefullythought out than in ordinary times of peace.On the basis of these convictions our effortsare directed towards four main achievements:To repair damage alreadyby war conditions tocausedthe bodily and mentalhealth of children. We, therefore,accept children who have suffered throughbombing, shelter sleeping, indiscriminateevacuation and billeting. We try to serveon the one hand as a convalescent homeand on the other, whenever necessary, asa home for problem children.To prevent further harm being doneto the children. If small babies have tobe separated from their mothers we try tokeep them in comparative safety withineasy reach of their families. We provideevery facility for visiting so that the babycan develop an attachment for and knowledgeof its mother and be prepared fora later return to normal family life. Forthe older children we make the necessaryprovision for ordinary peace-time educationand, again, to try to preserve the12

emnants of family attachments so far aspossible.To do research on the essentialpsychologicalneeds of children; to study theirreactions to bombing, destruction and earlyseparation from their families; to collectfacts about the harmful consequenceswhenever their essential needs remain unsatisfied;to observe the general influenceof community lifeat an early age on theirdevelopment.To instruct people interested in theforms of education based on psychologicalknowledge of the child; and generally towork out a pattern of nursery life whichcan serve as a model for peace-time educationin spite of the conditions of war.The Hampstead Nurseries consist of threehouses, which are financed by the Foster ParentsPlan for War Children whose Americanheadquarters are at55 West 42nd Street.5 Netherhall Gardens, London, N. W. 3, alarge residential nursery for babies andyoung children.13 Wedderburn Road, London, N.W.3,a day nursery run for the children fromthe residential nursery and some outsiders.Newbarn, Lindsell, near Chelmsford, Essex,a country house for evacuated Londonchildren from 3-6 years.13

The Nurseries, further, give lodging andpaid work to mothers while they nurse theirown babies, and extend hospitality to the parentsof all children.The staff consists of highly trained workersin the field of medicine, psychology, education,nursing, and domestic science; besides 20girls who receive training in the various departments.Most of the trained workers arerefugees from the continent who have donespecialised work in their own countries.14

SURVEY OFPSYCHOLOGICAL REACTIONSAll our bigger childrenhave had their fairshare of war experiences. All of them havewitnessed the air raids either in London orin the provinces. A large percentage of themhas seen their houses destroyed or damaged.All of them have seen their family life dissolved,whether by separation from or by deathof the father. All of them are separated fromtheir mothers and have entered communitylife at an age which is not usually consideredripe for it. The questions arise which partthese experiences play inthe psychological lifeof the individual child, how far the childacquires understanding of what is going onaround it, how it reacts emotionally, how farits anxiety is aroused, and what normal orabnormal outlets it will find to deal withthese experiences which are thrust on it.It can be safely said that all the childrenwho were over two years at the time of theLondon "blitz" have acquired knowledge of15

the significance of air raids. They all recognisethe noise of flying aeroplanes; they distinguishvaguely between the sounds of fallingbombs and anti-aircraft guns. They realisethat the house will fall down when bombedand that people are often killed or get hurt infalling houses. They know that fires can bestarted by incendiaries and that roads areoften blocked as a result of bombing. Theyfully understand the significance of taking shelter.Some children who have lived in deepshelters will even judge the safety of a shelteraccording to its depth under the earth. Thenecessity to make them familiar with their gasmasks may give them some ideas about agas attack, though we have never met a childfor whom this particular danger had any realmeaning.The children seem to have no difficulty inunderstanding what it means when their fathersjoin the Forces. We even overhear talkamong the children where they compare theirfathers' military ranks and duties. A child,for instance, with its father in the navy orair force, will be offended if somebody bymistake refers to the father as being "in thearmy." As far as the reasoning processes ofthe child are concerned, the absence of thefather seems to be accounted for in thismanner.16

Children are similarly ready to take inknowledge about the various occupations oftheir mothers, though the constant change ofoccupation makes this slightly more difficult.Mothers of three-year-olds will change backwardsand forwards between the occcupationsof railway porter, factory worker, bus conductor,milk cart driver, etc. They will visittheir children in their varying uniforms andwill proudly tell them about their new warwork until the children are completely confused.Though the children seem proud oftheir fathers' uniforms, they often seem to resentit and feel very much estranged whentheir mothers appear in such unexpected guises.It is still more difficult for all children toget any understanding of the reason whythey are being evacuated and cannot stay inthe place where their mothers are. In thecase of our children, as in the case of manyothers, this is further aggravated by the factthat they actually did live in London withtheir mothers during the worst dangers andwere sent to the country afterwards whenLondon seemed quite peaceful. They reasonwith some justification that they can live wherevertheir mothers do and that if "home" isas much in danger as all that, their mothersshould not be there either. This, of course,concerns the bigger children of five or more.17

The understanding of catastrophes, like thedeath of father, has littleto do with reasoning.In these cases children meet the usual psychologicaldifficulties of grasping the significanceof death at such an early age. Their attitudeto the happening is completely a matter ofemotion.We may, of course, be often wrong inassuming that children "understand" the happeningsaround them. In talking, they onlyuse the proper words for them but withoutthe meaning attached. Words like "army","navy", "air force", may mean to them strangecountries to which their fathers have gone.America, for the children, the place whereall the good things, especially all the parcelscome from, was discovered the other dayto mean to one child at least "a merry car".The word "bombing" is often used indiscriminatelyfor all manners of destruction ofunwanted objects. "London" is the word usedfor the children's former homes, irrespectiveof the fact whether the child now lives inEssex or still in Hampstead.Several of our children in WedderburnRoad used to say in talking: "When I was."still in London . .And one boy of four once explained ina London shop, to the shop assistant's greatastonishment: "I used to live in London, but18

London is all bombed and gone, and all thehouses have fallen down".He was unable to realise the fact that thecomparatively unbombed street in which henow lived with us was still the same city."Home" is the place to which all children aredetermined to return, irrespective of the factthat in most cases they are aware of itsdestruction."War", above everything else, signifiesthe period of time for which children have tobe separated from their parents.A striking example of such "misunderstanding"was Pamela, a girl of four and half years,who as we thought, had perfectly grasped themeaning of evacuation. She was a thricebombed child, lived in Wedderburn Road, andlike all others waited for the opening of ourcountry house. We had carefully explained toall the children that they were being transferredto the country and the reason for it.But when at last, after weeks of expectation—because the lease of the country house didnot materialise—she stood in our front hall,dressed and ready, waiting for the Americanambulance car to take her out, she exclaimedjoyfully; "The war is over and we are goingto the country. It has lasted a long time!"The longing for the Country House, whichhad been the centre of interest for the Nurserychildren for some weeks, had suddenly got19all

confused in her mind with the more generallonging for the end of the war, which wouldas all the children firmly believed, take themall back to their former homes and to theirparents.REACTION TO DESTRUCTIONIn this war, more than informer ones, childrenare frequently to be found directly onthe scenes of battle Though, here in England,they are spared the actual horror of seeing peoplefight around them, they are not sparedsights of destruction, death, and injury fromair raids. Even when removed from the placesof the worst danger there is no certainty, assome of our cases show, that they will notmeet new bombing incidents at places to whichthey were sent for safety. General sympathyhas been aroused by the idea that little children,all innocently, should thus come intoclose contact with the horrors of the war.this situation which led many people toIt isexpectthat children would receive traumatic shocksfrom air raids and would develop abnormalreactions very similar to the traumatic or warneuroses of soldiers in the last war.We can only describe our observation onthe basis of our own case material; whichexcludes children who have received severe20

odily injuries in air raids though, as mentionedbefore, it does not exclude children whohave been bombed repeatedly and partly buriedin debris. So far as we can notice, there wereno signs of traumatic shock to be observed inthese children. If these bombing incidentsoccur when small children are in the careeither of their own mothers or a familiarmother substitute, they do not seem to be particularlyaffected by them. Their experienceremains an accident, in line with other accidentsof childhood. This observation is borneout by the reports of nurses or social workersin London County Council Rest Centreswhere children used to arrive, usually in themiddle of the night, straight from theirbombed houses. They also found that childrenwho arrived together with their own familiesshowed littleexcitement and no undue disturbance.They slept and ate normally andplayed with whatever toys they had rescuedor which might be provided. It 1 is a widelydifferent matter when children, during anexperience of thiseven lose their parents.kind, are separated from orIt is a common misunderstanding of thechild's nature which leads people to supposethat children will be saddened by the sight ofdestruction and aggression. Children betweenthe ages of one and two years, when put to-21

gether in a play-pen will bite each other, pulleach other's hair and steal each other's toyswithout regard for the other child's unhappiness.They are passing through a stage ofdevelopment where destruction and aggressionplay one of the leading parts. If we observeyoung children at play, we notice that theywill destroy their toys, pull off the arms andlegs of their dolls or soldiers, puncture theirballs, smash whatever is breakable, and willonly mind the result because complete destructionof the toy blocks further play. The moretheir strength and independence are growingthe more they will have to be watched so asnot to create too much damage, not to hurteach other or those weaker than themselves.We often say, half jokingly, that there is continualwar raging in a nursery We mean bythis, that at this time of life destructive andaggressive impulses are still at work in childrenin a manner in which they only recur ingrown-up life when they are let loose for thepurposes of war.It is one of the recognised aims of educationto deal with the aggressiveness of thechild's nature, i. e. in the course of the fir?tfour of five years to change the child's ownattitude towards these impulses in himself. Thewish to hurt people, and later the wish todestroy objects, undergo all sorts of changes.22

They are usually first restricted, then suppressedby commands and prohibitions; alittlelater they are repressed, which means that theydisappear from the child's consciousness. Thechild does not dare any more to have knowledgeof these wishes. There is always thedanger that they might return from the unconscious;therefore, all sorts of protections arebuilt up against them—the cruel child developspity, the destructive child will becomehesitant and over careful. If education ishandled intelligently the main part of theseaggressive impulses will be directed away fromtheir primitive aim of doing harm to somebodyor something, and will be used to fight thedifficulties of the outer world — toaccomplishtasks of all kinds, to measure one's strength incompetition and to use it generally to "dogood" instead of "being bad" as the originalimpulse demanded.In the light of these considerations it isInstead of turningeasier to determine what the present war conditions,with their incidents of wholesale destructionmay do to a child.away from them in instinctive horror, as peopleseem to expect, the child may turn towardsthem with primitive excitement. The realdanger is not that the child, caught up allinnocently inthe whirlpool of the war, will beshocked into illness. The danger lies in the23

fact that the destruction raging in the outerworld may meet the very real aggressivenesswhich rages in the inside of the child. At theage when education should start to deal withthese impulses confirmation should not begiven from the outside world that the sameimpulses are uppermost in other people.Childrenwill play joyfully on bombed sites andaround bomb craters, they will play withblasted bits of furniture and throw bricks fromcrumbled walls at each other. But it becomesimpossible to educate them towards a repressionof, a reaction against destruction whilethey are doing so. After their first years oflife they fight against their own wishes to doaway with people of whom they are jealous,who disturb or disappoint them, or who offendtheir childish feelings in some other way. Itmust be very difficult for them to accomplishthis task of fighting their own death wisheswhen, at the same time, people are killed andhurt every day around them. Children havto be safeguarded against the primitive horror'sof the war, not because horrors and atrocitiesare so strange to them, but because we want{them at this decisive stage of their developmentto overcome and estrange themselvesfrom the primitive and atrocious wishes of {their own infantile nature.r24

FIVE TYPES OF AIR RAID ANXIETYWhat is true about the child's attitude todestruction applies in a certain measure to thesubject of anxiety. Children are, of course,afraid of air raids, but their fear is neither asuniversal nor as overwhelming as has beenexpected. An explanation is required as towhy it is present in some cases, absent inothers, comparatively mild in most and ratherviolent in certain types of children.It will be easier to answer these practicalwe draw on our theoretical knowl-questions ifedge about the motives for fear and anxietyreactions in human beings. We have learnedthat there are three main reasons for thedevelopment of fear reactions:An individual is afraid quite naturally andsensibly when there is some real danger -present in the outside world which threatenseither his safety or his whole existence. Hisfear will be all the greater the more he knowsabout the seriousness of the danger. His fearwill urge him to adopt precautionary measures.Under its influence he will either fight it or ifthat is impossible, try to escape from it. Onlywhen the danger is of overwhelming extentand suddenness will he be shocked and paralysedinto inaction. This so-called "real "a n x i e t y " plays its part in the way in whichchildren are afraid of air raids. They fear25

them as far as they can understand what ishappening. As described above they have, inspite of their youth, acquired a certain degreeof knowledge of this new danger. But itwould be a mistake to over-rate this understanding,and consequently, to over-rate theamount or the permanency of this real fearof air raids. Knowledge and reason only playa limited part in a child's life. Its interestquickly turns away from the real things inthe outer world, especially when they are unpleasant,and reverts back to its own childishinterests, to its toys, its games and to itsphantasies. The danger in the outer worldwhich it recognises at one moment and towhich it answers with its fear, is put aside inanother moment. Precautions are not keptup, and the fear gives way to an attitude ofutterdisregard.There isthe observation made by one of ourcolleagues during a day-light air raid in asurface shelter into which a mother had shepherdedher little son of school age. For awhile they both listened to the dropping ofthe bombs; then the boy lost interest andbecame engrossed in a story book which he hadbrought with him. The mother tried to interrupthis reading several times with anxiousexclamations.He always returned to his book after a sec-26

ond, until she at last said in an angry andscolding tone: "Drop your book and attend tothe air raid".We made exactly the same observations inthe Children's Centre at the time of the December,March, and May raids. When ourune.xploded bomb lay in the neighbouringgarden, the children began by being mildlyinterested and afraid. They learned to keepaway from glass windows and to avoid theentrance into the garden. By keeping upcontinual talkabout the possible explosion wecould have frightened them into continuationof that attitude. Whenever we let the subjectalone their interest flagged. They forgot aboutthe menace from the glass whenever they returnedto their accustomed games; when thethreat from outside lasted more than a weekthey began to get cross with it and denied itspresence.In spite of the bomb still being unremovedthey suddenly declared: "The bomb is goneand we shall go into the garden!"There is nothing outstanding in this behaviourof children towards the presence of realdanger and real fear. It is only one exampleof the way in which, at this age, they dealwith the facts of reality whenever they becomeunpleasant. They drop their contact withreality, they deny the facts, get rid of their27

fear in this manner and return, apparentlyundisturbed, to the pursuits and interests oftheir own childish world.The second reason for anxiety can best beunderstood by reverting to the child's attitudetowards destruction and aggression which wehave described before. After the first yearsof life the individual learns to criticise andovercome in himself certain instinctive wishes,or rather he learns to refuse them consciousexpression. He learns that it is bad to kill,to hurt and to destroy, and would like tobelieve that he has no further wish to do anyof these things. But he can only keep up thisattitude when the people in the outer world dolikewise.When he sees killing and destructiongoing on outside it arouses his fear that theimpulses which he has only a short while agoburied in himself will be awakened again.We have described above how the smallchild in whom these inhibitions against aggressionhave not yet been established is free ofthe abhorrence of air raids. The slightly olderchild who has just been through this fight withitself will, on the other hand, be particularlysensitive to their menace. When it has only justlearned to curb its own aggressive impulses, itwill have real outbreaks of anxiety when bombscome down and do damage around it.This type of anxiety we have only seen in28

one girl of another age group, ten years old,who ardently wished to leave England altogetherand to return to Canada, where she hadbeen born, where everything was peaceful and"no horrid things to see".The third type of anxiety is of a completelydifferent nature. There is no education withoutfear. Children are afraid of disobeyingthecommands and prohibitions of their elderseither because they fear punishments or becausethey fear losing their parents' love wheneverthey are naughty. This fear of authoritydevelops a little later into a fear of the child'sown conscience. We regard it as progress inthe child's education when commands and prohibitionsfrom outside become more and moreunnecessary, and the child knows what to dodo under the direction of hisand what not toAt the time when this nucleusown conscience.of inner ideas which we call conscience, isformed, itturns back continually to the figuresof the outside world on the one hand, to theimaginations of his own phantasy on the other,and borrows strength from both to reinforcethe inner commandments.The child of four or five who is afraid inthe evening before sleep because it thinks ithas done wrong or thought forbidden thoughts,will not only have a "bad conscience" or beafraid what father and mother would say if29

they knew about its wickedness. It will alsobe afraid of ghosts and bogeymen asreinforcementsof the realparent figures and of the innervoice.Children have a large list of dangers whichserve as convenient symbols for their conscience—they are afraid of policemen who willcome and arrest them, gypsies and robberswho will steal them, chimney sweeps or coalcarriers who will put them in their bags, dustmenwho will put them in their bins, lionsand tigers who will come and eat them,earthquakes which will shake their houses, andthunderstorms which will threaten them. Whenthey receive religious teaching they may leaveall else aside and be afraid of the devil andof hell. There are many children who cannotgo to sleep in the evening because they areafraid that God will look in on them andpunish them for their sins. There are otherswho receive no religious teaching who transferthe same fear to the moon. Theycannot fall asleep if the moon looks at themthrough the window; there are even childrenwho cannot fall asleep because their fears arebusy with expectations of the end of the world.For children in this stage of development oftheir inner conscience air raids are simply anew symbol for old fears. They are as afraid ofsirens and of bombs as they are afraid of30

thunder and lightning. Hitler and Germanplanes take the place of the devil,again inthe morning.of the lionsIn the Children's Centre, for instance, Charlie,four and a half years old, called from hisbed in the evening that the shelter was notsafe enough, and that the house would falldown on him. He would certainly have calledout in the same way in peace time to say thathe had a fear of earthquakes or of thunderstorms.Roger, four years old, demanded thathis mother come every evening and standarched over his bed until he fell asleep. Itis well known that there are many childrenof that same age, who, at all times, refuse togo to sleep unless their mothers stand by tohold their hands and safeguard them againstforbidden actions. There is another boy ofthe same age whom the nursery superintendenthas to assure with endless repetitions that ifshe leaves him at night he will surely find herand the tigers.This fear also only disguises itself as a fearof air attack at night. When we inquire intoit more closely we realise that he is afraidthat he has done wrong somehow, and that forpunishment his teacher and protector will bespirited away at night. We can convinceourselves of the truth of this explanation whenwe have the chance to remove these children31

from danger and put them in surroundingswhere is no talk of air raids. They will slowlyrevert to their former forms of anxiety. Weshall know that peace has returned when nothingis left for the children to be afraid of excepttheir own former ghosts and bogeymen.This enumeration of the various types ofair raid anxiety in children, long as it mavseem, is still incomplete. Even superficialobservation will show that children do notonly undergo and develop the fears whichbelong totheir own age and stage of development,but that they also share the fear reactionsof their mothers, and, more generally, of thegrown-up world around them. No understandingof their own, no development of inhibitionsagainst primitive aggression and noguilty conscience is necessary for the developmentof this further type of anxiety. A childof school age, like the boy described above,may stick stubbornly to its own reactions. Achild in the infant stage of one, two, three,four years of age will shake and tremble withthe anxiety of its mother, and this anxietywill impart itself the more thoroughly to thechild the younger it is. The primitive animaltie between mother and baby which, in somerespects, still makes one being out of the twois the basis for the development of this typeof air raid anxiety in children. The quiet32

manner in which the London population on thewhole met the air raids is therefore responsiblein one way for the extremely rare occurrenceof "shocked" children.An instance of this is the experience a medicalcolleague had a few days after London firein the St. Pancras Dispensary. A motherappeared as out-patient with her little girl offive. When asked what was the matter withthe child she simply said: "I think she has acough and a bit of a cold".When asked about its beginnings, she said"Being taken out from the warmth into thecold might be responsible".When questioned further she gave the information,bit by bit, that she and the little girlhad been regular shelterers in a big basementshelter under a warehouse. The buildingabove them, like so many others, had caughtfire and been destroyed. The exits of the shelterwere blocked, but a rescue party had comeand dragged the shelterers out one by one.She said: "As a matter of fact, I have beenquite worried about the little one because fora while they could not find her".It was the transition from this blazing furnaceof the shelter to the cold December airwhich had given the child "the cough and abit of a cold". We can be certain that thisparticular child, protected and fortified by33

her mother's lack of fearnot develop air-raidanxiety.One of our own mothers, aand excitement, willcomfortable andplacid Irishwoman, the mother of eight children,when asked whether her rooms had beendamaged by bombing, answered, with a beam-Weing smile: "Oh, no, we were ever so lucky.had only blast, and my husband fixed the window-framesagain".Blast, which removes the window frames,not to mention the window panes, can be a veryuncomfortable experience; but again, we canbe certain that for the children of this motherthe occurrence of the blast was not a veryalarming incident.We had, on the other hand, the opportunityto observe very anxious mothers with very anxiouschildren. There was John's mother, whodeveloped agoraphobia during the air raids.She never went to bed while the alarm lasted,stood at the door trembling and insisted onthe child not sleeping either. He, a boy offive, had to get dressed, to hold her hand andto stand next to her. He developed extremenervousness, and bed wetting. When separatedfrom her in the Children's Centre he did notshow special alarm either in daylight or innight raids.Iris, a girl, three and a half years old, whosemother was "quite nervous" since their small34

flat had been bombed and they had been takenin by neighbours, would demand to be takenout of bed at night during raids and to sit alldressed on a chair. She never repeated thisreaction when living with us. We also had anopportunity to observe one mother with a newbornbaby who, at a time before the shelterhad been built, slept in our house under thestairs.Whenever the whistling of a bomb washeard she would snatch up the baby and couldhardly be prevented from rushing out of doors.She must have known that the child was saferunder the stairs than in the open with thecontinual rain of anti-aircraft shrapnel. Butthis realization did not help matters; it wasevidently abrogated by a more primitive fearof the baby being buried in the house. Thebaby, of course, remained unconscious of thedanger but, in watching the scene, we feltconvinced that the mother's state of frenzymust have imparted itself to the baby in someharmful manner. Luckily, this particular motherwas able to leave London soon for thecomparative safety of the country.The fear of air raids assumes completelydifferent dimensions in those children whohave lost their fathers as a result of bombing.In quiet times they turn away from their memoriesas much as possible and are gay andunconcerned in their play with the other chil-35

dren. We have four examples, where theirgaiety is of a specially uncontrolled and unforcedkind. The recurrence of an air raidforces them to remember and repeat their formerexperience. Again, it is more the mother'semotion which they may have to live throughthan their own.One little boy of four years then re-experiencesin detail how they heard the bombfall on the particular place where the fatherworked, the rising anxiety when he did not returnhome at the usual time, the mother's concernover the meal which she had preparedand then, together with the mother, the searchfor the lostbody, the endless inquiries at variousofficial places, the waiting at the mortuary,and the mother's grief and sorrow when theloss was confirmed. For these children everybomb which falls is like the one which killedthe father, and is feared as such. One of ourwar orphans, in contrast to all other children,is immensely excited when he sightsany bomb damage, new or old. Another,a little girl of six, transfers this fear and excitationfrom bombs to accidents of all kinds,to the sight of ambulances, talk of hospitals, ofillnesses, of operations, inshort to every occurrencewhich brings the fact of death back toher mind. It is true, of course, that thislatter fear is not a true type of air-ra,id36I

anxiety. It is, above everything else, a reactionto the death of the father.REACTION TO EVACUATIONThe war acquires comparatively little significancefor children so long as it only threatenstheir lives, disturbs their material comfort orcuts their food rations. It becomes enormouslysignificant the moment u^it breaks up family lifeand uproots the first emotional attachments ofthe child within the family group. Londonchildren, therefore, were on the whole muchless upset by bombing than by evacuation tothe country as a protection against it.The reasons for and against evacuation werewidely discussed during the first year of thewar in England. Interest in the psychologicalreactions of the children receded into the backgroundwhen, in the second year, the air raidson London demonstrated against all possibleobjections the practical need for children'sevacuation. In order to survey completely allthe psychological problems involved, the subjectwould have to be studied from variousangles.There is an interesting social problem involvedin billeting.Children who are billetedon householders who are either above or belowthe social and financial status of their parentswill be very conscious of the difference. If37

urged to adapt themselves to a higher levelof cleanliness, speech, manners, social behaviouror moral ideals,they will resent these demandsas criticism directed against their ownparents and may oppose them as such. Thereare children who will refuse new clothes, andhang on to torn and dirty things which theyhave brought from home. With young childrenthis may be just an expression of loveand a desire to cling to memories; with olderchildren it is simultaneously an expressionof their refusal to be unfaithful to the standardof their homes. Their reaction may, ofcourse, also be of the opposite kind. Thequickness with which they drop their ownstandards may be an expression of hostilityagainst their own parents. When, on the otherhand, children are billeted on families who arepoorer than their own, they easily interpretthe fact as punishment for former ungratefulnessshown at home.This situation of being billeted has a secretpeace-time counterpart in the child's innerphantasy life. Most children of early schoolage, six to ten, possess a secret daydream —the "family romance" — which deals withtheir descent from royal or lordly parents whohave only intrusted them to their real, morehumble families. Others have secret fears ofbeing stolen from their families and then38

forced to live in poor and dingy surroundings.On the part of the child these phantasies areattempts to deal with the whole range of conflictingemotions towards the parents. Love,hate, admiration, criticism, and even contemptfor the parents are worked out in them.Whenevacuation occurs at this time of life the factof being billeted with foster parents of a differentsocial level may be upsetting to thechild because it gives sudden and undesiredreality to a situation which was meant to belived out in the realms of phantasy.The psychological problem of the fostermother is evident even to those who otherwiserefuse to take psychological complicationstoo seriously.Possessiveness of the mother is,as we know, an important factor in the motherchildrelationship. The child starts its lifeas one part of the mother's body. Insofar asthe feelings of the mother are concerned itremains just that for several years. Egoisticreactions of the mother normally include thechild. Harm to the child is resented by themother as if it were harm done to herself.Every human being normally over-estimates hisown importance, his own personality and hisown body. This overestimation on the part ofthe mother also includes the child. Thisexplains why an infant who is neither goodlookingnor clever may still seem to possess39

oth qualities in the eyes of its own motherIt is this primitive possessiveness and overestimationat the bottom of motherly lovewhich make it possible for mothers to standthe strain of work for their children withoutfeeling abused. It is common knowledge thatonly love for children will prevent their continualdemands, the continual noise caused bythem, and the continual damage done by themfrom being considered a nuisance.Foster mothers, i.e. householders, are expectedto suffer children whom they neitherlove nor over-estimate. There will only be twocourses open to them. One is to retain theattitude of an indifferent outsider, to complainabout the imposition and to try and getrid of the child as soon as possible. Theother course taken is to adopt the mother'sattitude, which means to feel towards thestrange child as if it were her own. The fostermother will in these last cases not suffer fromthe children billeted on her, or rather shewill take the trouble involved as a matter ofcourse, as mothers do.But this second attitude, which is the causeof all billeting successes, contains another danger.The real mother of the child will suddenlyturn up on Sundays or holidays andclaim earlier rights of possession. It has beensaid on many occasions, and once more after the4D

failure of billeting mothers on householders,that it is impossible for two women to shareone kitchen. This may be exaggerated. Butit is certainly impossible for two mothers toshare one child.There is a third, minor, problem which sofar has been less considered. It is the problemof jealousy and competition between brothersand sisters which is presented in evacuation inthe new form of jealousy of fosterbrothersand sisters. Children neverfeel friendly towards newborn additions totheir family. They sometimes pretend to doso; at other times they are mollified by thesmallness and complete helplessness of the newcomer.The newly billeted foster-brother, onthe other hand, isvery often neither small norhelpless. He usurps rights which the otherchild is unwilling to give up. The billetednewcomer for his part is deeply conscious ofhis second-rate position and is embittered by it.There are certainly all the elements for jealousyand discomfort given in the situation.These reactions are interesting enough tobe made the subject of surveys which are carriedout by child guidance clinics set up inreception areas and by consulting psychologistsattached to County Medical Offices. Theykeep an eye on trouble in the billets, smoothnut difficulties and remove the worst billeting41

misfits.They have in their positions a uniqueopportunity to study the situation — especiallythe situation of the school children.The Government Scheme forEvacuation of unattended children wasnever meant to include children under schoolage, with the exception of some little ones whowere taken along with evacuation parties asyounger brothers and sisters. Evacuation ofunattended children under five was rightlyconsidered a difficult undertaking. They weresupposed to stay with their mothers and onlyto be evacuated with them whenever necessary.When the percentage of mothers who wereunwilling to leave London and stay in billetswas rather large, a scheme for under-fives wasadded to the other. These under-fives whosemothers had to have a good reason for stayingbehind were sent out unattended, either tonurseries or to selected billets. The difficultyremained that vacancies under this scheme werescarce compared with the onrush of motherswho were eager to send their small childrento some place of safety.In a London nursery like ours there islittleopportunity for collecting evidence aboutthe successful billeting of under-fives. Childrenwho are happy in their billets i.e.,who find a foster mother ready to "adopt"them, stay in the country and little more is42

heard about them. "Billeting-failures" on theother hand, wander backwards and forwardsbetween London and the country. Some ofthem may settle down inthe end in residentialnurseries like ours, which are created eitherby private initiative in England or by one ofthe American Relief Funds. More than twentypercent of our cases are billeting failures ofvarioustypes.We should be more inclined to hold the billetsresponsible for the inability of such largenumbers of children to adapt themselves to thenew conditions if we did not possess first-handevidence of the difficulties involved from ourown observations of the children after theirfirst separation from their families. The mostimpressive examples of this kind have beendescribed at various times in our monthlyreports. It is true that not many children presentas frightening a picture as Patrick, threeand a half years old, who found himself reducedto a state in which compulsive formulaand symptomatic actions played the largestpart; or Beryl, four years old, who sat forseveral days on the exact spot where hermother had left her, would not speak, eator play, and had to be moved around like anautomaton. Even apart from these unusualcases we have seen long drawn-out states ofhomesickness, upset and despair which are43

certainly more than the average inexperiencedfoster mother can be expected to cope with.We certainly see no similar states of distressin children when we make the roundof London shelters and find them sleepingon the platforms next to their mothers. Ourown feelings revolt against the idea of infantsliving under the condition of air-raid dangerand underground sleeping. For the childrenthemselves, during the days or weeks of homesickness,this is the state of bliss to which theyall desire to return.There are so many obvious reasons whysmall children should not stay in London sheltersthat it is not easy to pay equal attentionto the emotional reaction of the individualchild against evacuation.A child who is removed from London to thecountry is certainly removed from a state ofgreater danger to a lesser one; it exchangesunhygienic conditions of life for more hygienicones.It avoids possibilities of infection whichmultiply where thousands of individuals aremassed together. If the child goes to a residentialnursery, it will be better fed than before;it will be given proper occupation and companionshipand will be spared the dreariness ofan existence where it was dragged to and frobetween home and shelter with long and emptyhours of queuing-up at a tube station.44

It is difficult to realise that all these improvementsin the child's life may dwindledown to nothing when weighed against the factthat it has to leave its family to gain them.This state of affairs is still more difficult to understandwhen we consider that many of themothers concerned are not "good mothers" inthe ordinary sense of the word. We dealawithlarge majority of mothers who are affectionate,intelligent, hard working and ready tomake every possible sacrifice for their children;but there are a minority of mothers whoThey may be lazy and negligent,are neither.hard and embittered and unable to give affection.There are others who are overly strict intheir demands and make the life and upbringingof the child extremely difficult. It is aknown fact that children will cling even tomothers who are continually cross and sometimescruel to them. The attachment of thesmall child to its mother seems to a large degreeindependent of her personal qualities, andcertainly of her educational ability.This statement is not based on any sentimentalconception of the sacredness of the tie betweenmother and child. It is the outcome ofdetailed knowledge of the growth and natureof the child's emotional life in which the figureof the mother is for a certain time the sole importantrepresentative of the whole outer world.45

Development of the Mother-Relationship and the Effect ofSeparation from the Mother atthe Various StagesIn the relationship of the small child to itsmother there are definite main phases to bedistinguished from each other.The first phases which comprise thefirst few months of life are characteristicallyselfish and material. The young baby's Jife isgoverned by sensations of need and satisfaction,pleasure and discomfort. The mother plays apart in it insofar as she brings satisfaction andremoves discomfort. When the baby is fed,warm and comfortable, it withdraws its interestfrom the outer world and falls asleep. Whenit is hungry, cold and wet or disturbed by sensationsin its own intestines it cries for attention.It is certain that the care and attentiongiven by the mother, i.e.in a special atmosphereof affection which only the mother can supply,is more satisfactory to the baby than moreindifferent and mechanical ministrations to itsneeds.But the fact is that a baby, who at this timeof life is separated from its mother, will acceptfood and care from a mother substitute. Itsneeds are overwhelming, its helplessness is extreme,and its distinction between one personand another is still in the beginning stage.46

Babies of this age who are left with us bymothers will usually have a short time of upset,may cry a while, have more difficulty in fallingasleep and show some irregularity in their digestionfor a day or two.We still have to learn exactly how muchof this upset is due to the disturbance of routineand how much to the change away fromthe individual handling and from the particularatmosphere of intimacy created by themother. The upset caused, is of course, of amore serious nature and of far longer durationin cases where the mother has been breastfeedingthe baby and weaning has to occursimultaneously with the separation. Weaning initself acts on the child as a loss of satisfactionand a separation from the mother in an importantsense.When the mother, who has left,reappears after a few days, the baby at thisstage willprobably not show signs of recognition.The second phase starts roughly, inthe second half of the first year of life.The materialrelationship to the mother still exists.The mother remains, as she will remain forseveral years, the instrument of satisfaction forthe child. But out of this ignoble beginningof a human relationship something differentbegins to grow.The baby begins to pay attention to the47

mother also at times when there is no urgentnecessity for it to be attended to. It likes itsmother's company, enjoys her fondling, anddislikes to be left alone. So far the absenceof the mother has only been a potential danger;some inner need might arise and theremight be nobody outside to fulfil it. Now, inthis later phase, the mother is already appreciatedor missed for her own sake. The childis conscious of her presence follows her aroundwith its eyes, can answer her smile and is, asdescribed above, moved by her moods. Its needfor her affection becomes as urgent for itspsychological satisfaction as the need to befed and taken care of is for its bodily comfort.Disturbance after parting from the motherwill last somewhat longer at this stage.Babies of this age are sometimes off theirfeed when left with us. Many show signs ofrestlessness during sleep and often seem unfriendlyor rather withdrawn from contactwith the outer world. Smiles, friendliness,playfulness, will only reappear after the bodilyfunctions have returned tonormality. This interruptionof psychic contact with the outerworld is not simply the consequence of thebodily discomfort which the baby experiences;when once used to us the same baby will notcut off its contact with the nurse who handlesit even in times of illness.48

But at this period of separation it repeatswhat it did in the beginning of its mother relationship— itestablishes personal contact withthe mother substitute only on the basis of thefulfillment and satisfaction provided for itsbodilyneeds.The personal attachment of the child to itsmother, which starts in this manner in thefirst year of life, comes to its full developmentin the second one. It was said before that the vchild is attached to its mother; it can now besafely said that it loves her. The feelings forher which it is able to experience acquire thestrength and variety of adult human love. Thislove makes demands and is possessive. All thechilds instinctive wishes are now centred onthe mother. While she is breast-feeding it, itwants to "eat" her; later on it will bite her,handle her, and whatever impulse starts up init will try to find satisfaction on her person.This relationship between small child andmother might be a happy one except for tworeasons. The child's demands are too great;it is virtually insatiable. However long themother may have fed it at the breast, it willexpress by its resentment at weaning time thatit was not long enough; however much timeshe spends near it, it will still bitterly resentbeing left alone at other times. Also, the childsoon becomes aware of the fact that there are49

other people in the world besides itself and itsmother. It realizes the presence of brothers andsisters who claim equal rights and become itsrivals. It becomes aware, sometimes at a veryearly age, of the presence of the father, andincludes him in its world. It recognises himas a dangerous rival where family life isnormal. It loves him at the same time. Withthis conflict of feelings it enters into the wholecomplicated entanglement of feelings whichcharacterise the emotional life of humanbeings.Reactions to parting at this time of life areparticularly violent. The child feels suddenlydeserted by all the known persons in its worldto whom it has learned to attach importance.Its new ability to love finds itself deprived ofthe accustomed objects, and its greed for affectionremains unsatisfied. Its longing for itsmother becomes intolerable and throws it intostates of despair which are very similar tothe despair and distress shown by babies whoare hungry and whose food does not appearat the accustomed time. For several hours, oreven for a day or two this psychological cravingof the child, the "hunger" for its mother,may over-ride all bodily sensations.There are some children of this age who willrefuse to eat or to sleep. Very many of themwill refuse to be handled or comforted by50

strangers. The children cling to some objector to some form of expression which means tothem, at that moment, memory of the materialpresence of the mother. Some will cling to atoy which the mother has put into their handsat the moment of parting; others to some itemof bedding or clothing which they havebrought from home.Some will monotonously repeat the word bywhich they are used to call their mothers, asfor instance, Christine, seventeen months old,"who said: "Mum, mum, mum, mum, mum .She repeated it continually in a deep voicefor at least three days.Observers seldom appreciate the depth andseriousness of this grief of a small child. Theirjudgment of it is misled for one main reason.This childish grief is short-lived. Mourningof equal intensity in an adult person wouldhave to run its course throughout a year; thesame process in the child between one andtwo years will normally be over in thirty-six toforty-eight hours. It is a psychological errorto conclude from this short duration that thereaction is only a superficial one and can betreated lightly. The difference in duration isdue to certain psychological differences betweenthe state of childhood and adultness. Thechild's life is still entirely governed by theprinciple which demands that it should seek51.

pleasure and avoid pain and discomfort. It cannotwait for the arrival of pleasure and beardiscomfort in the idea that inthis way ultimatepleasure may again be reached.An adult person may find himself in thesame situation of being suddenly cut off fromall the people he loves, and will also experienceintense longing. But his memories of thepast and his outlook into the future will helphim maintain an inner relationship to theloved objects and thus to bridge the perioduntil re-union is possible.The psychological situation of the child iscompletely different. A love object who doesnot give it immediate satisfaction is no goodto it. Its memories of the past are spoilt bythe disappointment which it feels at the presentmoment. It has no outlook into the futureand it would be of no help to it if it had. Itsneeds are so urgent that they need immediategratification; promises of pleasure are no help.The little child will therefore, after a shortwhile, turn away from the mother image in itsmind and, though at first unwillingly, will acceptthe comfort which is offered. In somecases acceptance may come in slow stages.Christine, for instance, would at first only letherself be fondled or held by an unseen person.She would sit on somebody's lap, turnler head away, enjoy the familiar sensation52

of being held, and probably add to it in herown mind the imaginary picture of her ownmother. Whenever she looked at the face ofthe person who held her she began to cry.There are other children who are sparedthese violent reactions. They seem placid,dazed, and more or less indifferent. It takesa few days or even a week before this placidityis disturbed by a realisation of the fact thatthey are among strangers; all sorts of slighterdepressive reactions and problems of behaviourwill then result. All children of this age, thosewith the violent reactions as well as thosewhere reaction is delayed, will show a tendencyto fall ill under the new conditions; they willdevelop colds, sore throats, or slight intestinaltroubles.That the shock of parting at this stage isreally serious is further proven by the observationthat a number of these children fail torecognise their mothers when they are visitedafter they have "settled down" in their new surroundings.The mothers themselves realise thatthis lack of recognition is not due to any limitationsof the faculty of memory as such. Thesame child who looks at its mother's face withstony indifference as if she were a completestranger, will have no difficulty in recognisinglifeless objects which have belonged to itspast.When taken home again it will recognise the53

ooms, the position of the beds and will rememberthe contents of cupboards, etc.Fathers also are treated better in this respect.The children were always more or lessused to their coming and going and not dependenton them for their primitive gratifications.Consequently, parting from themis no real shock and their memory remainsmore undisturbed. Failure to recognise themother occurs when something has happenedto the image of the mother in the child'smind, i.e., to its inner relationship to her.The mother has disappointed the child andleft its longing for her unsatisfied; so it turnsagainst her with resentment and rejects thememory of her person from its consciousness.MOTHER AND CHILDRELATIONSHIP IN THEEARLY STAGESWhat is true about the small child remainstrue with certain modifications for the next twoor three years of life. Changes are broughtabout slowly by development in various directions.Intelligence grows and enables thechild to get some understanding of real situations,for instance, of the real reasons forbeing sent way; towards the age of five thismental understanding already acts as a realhelp in lessening the shock. More comfort54

can be derived from memories, and hopes forthe future begin to play a part.On the other hand the relations between childrenand their parents are less simple andharmonious at this time time of life. All sortsof complicating factors have been added to thehome situation and confuse the picture whenthe family has to break up. The child of thisage has ceased to live in partnership with itsmother only; it has become a member of alarger family group, and this factor has a bearingon its emotions and affections.So far the emotional development of boysand girls has appeared rather similar; at thisage they begin to develop definitely along differentlines. The boy begins to identify himselfwith his father and to imitate him in variousways. This changes his position towards themother; he ceases to be a dependent baby, andturns into a small demanding male who claimsher attention, desires her admiration, and longsto possess her in more grown-up ways. Thelittle girl, on the other hand, has grown awayfrom her complete absorption in the mother.She begins to imitate her in turn, shetries to play mother herself with dolls or withher younger brothers and sisters. She turns heraffection and interest more towards the father,and would like him to appreciate her in themother's place.55

Both sexes in this manner have their firstexperience in being in love. As a result ofcircumstances it is inevitable that this first loveis disappointing. In comparison with the rivalparent the child feels itself to be small, ineffectiveand inferior. It experiences feelingsof anger towards one parent, jealousy towardsthe other, and feels generally discontented thatits fantastic wishes to be big can find no realfulfillment.It acts as a second disturbing factor that theparents use the love which children feel forthem to educate the children. The early upbringingof children is not at all an easyundertaking.Children are born as little savages; whenthey enter school at the age of five they areexpected to be more or less civilised humanbeings. This means that the first years of lifeare completely filled with the struggle betweenthe demands of the parents and the instinctivewishes of the child. Already in the first twoyears weaning has been carried out against thedesire of the child and habit training has beenenforced. The child's hunger and greed havehad to adapt themselves to regular meal times.In this new period the parents criticise andrestrict the child's aggression and itswishes todestroy things. They not only train it to cleanliness,they want it to dislike dirt as much as56

they do. When it is naturally cruel, they wantit to feel pity. Its first sexual impulses areinterfered with when it tries to satisfy itselfon the its own body; it certainly finds no satisfactionwhen it turns towards its parents. Thecuriosity of the child isand itsleft largely unsatisfied,natural desire to be admired is criticisedas a wish to "show off." In this first educationof the child, the parents do not usually applycompulsion; they simply make use of the dependenceof the child and of its love for fatherand mother. The child is quite helpless in thehands of the parents; therefore, even a slightpunishment will frighten it into obedience.The parents' love is all-important to the child;therefore it is used as a reward when the childis "good" and its withdrawal is threatenedwhen the child is "naughty." In this unequalbattle nothing is left to the child in the end butto give in and become civilised.These two factors, disappointment in earlylove and the pressure of education, threaten tospoil the pleasantness of the relations betweenchild and parent. Whenever the child is deniedsome pleasure it becomes resentful, whenit is too much restricted it turns obstinate.When it is punished it hates the parents; butit can never stand hating father or motherwithout feeling the strongest guilt about itChildren are quick in their anger and know57

only one main punishment for anybody whooffends them, i.e. that this person should goaway and not return, which in childishlanguage means that he should die.In everydaylife at home these emotions are naturaland necessary; they create small outbursts andsettle down again. The father or mother whohave been wished dead atone moment are re-Oninstated in the child's affections in the next.the other hand, it is probably these violentnegative feelings of the child which determineits reaction to separation at this period. Thenegative feelings towards the parents are meantto be only transitory. Under the influence ofdaily contact they are held in check and neutralisedby the affection for the parents whichis constantly produced in answer to all thesatisfactions which the child receives.It does not seem so very dangerous to killa parent in phantasy if at the same timeoutward evidence shows that this same parentis alive and. well. But separation seems to bean intolerable confirmation of all these negativefeelings. Father and mother are nowreally gone. The child is frightened by theirabsence and suspects that their desertion maybe another punishment or even the consequenceof its own bad wishes. To overcomethis guilt it overstresses all the love which ithas ever felt for its parents. This turns the58

naturalpain of separation into an intense longingwhich is hard to bear. In theses moods ofhomesickness children are usually particularlygood. Commands and prohibitions which theyformerly opposed at home are now religiouslyobserved in the absence of the parents. Whatevermight be interpreted as implied criticismof the parents is violently resented. Theysearch their thoughts for past wrongs aboutwhich they might feel guilty.Patrick, three and one half years old, whenhe heard that his mother had gone tothe hospitalwith a bad leg began to remember a timewhen he had kicked her, and began to wonderwhether her illness was his fault.Visits or lack of them is understood as rewardsand punishments. We had several littlegirls of three and four who would "hangaround" the doors for hours when their motherswere expected to come. But the visits at thesetimes never brought the desired satisfaction.When the mothers were present the childrenwould be gloomy, shy, and hang onto themwithout talking; when the mothers left againthe affection broke through and violent sceneswere produced. The children acted as if theycould only feel love towards the absent mother;towards the present mother resentment wasuppermost.Again, the reactions towards the father do59

not develop on quite the same lines. There aretwo main attitudes which we were able toobserve. The first is that many children willadopt every father who enters the nursery asif he were their own. They will demand tosit on his lap or wish to be carried aroundby him. A visiting mother will never beclaimed in this manner by strange children.The second is that some little girls, two tofour years old, will suddenly develop acuteanxiety at the sight of any man, will turntheir face away, cover their eyes with theirhands, shriek with fear and run to the nursesfor protection. The first reaction may easilybe due to the general scarcity of the male elementin nursery life. The second is probablybased on the inner rejection of the fatherdue to the child's disappointment caused byseparation.Further Fate of the Child-Parent RelationshipAt the beginning of this chapter we describedhow difficult it is at the start of nurserylife to wean the child away from itsmother. It is just as difficult in the later workto try and keep alive in the child at leastremnants of its original relationship to theparents.Most of the children under three will, be-60

cause of the inner situation described, forgetabout their parents or at least become apparentlyindifferent towards them. They shifttheir affections to the new surroundings and,after some hesitation and some loss of valuabledevelopment to be described later, will restartnormal life on a new basis.After three years of age children will notnormally forget their parents. Their memoriesare more stable, a change of attitude takes theplace of complete repression. It is alreadyeasier for the children to find active and consciousexpression for their feelings. The imageof the parents remains intheir mind, especiallywhen helped from the outside by frequentvisits, receipt of parcels, and constant talkabout the parents. Frequently, these parentalimages undergo greatchanges compared withthe real parent in the child's past. In phantasylife the absent parents seem better, bigger,richer,more generous and more tolerant thanthey have ever been. It isthe negative feelings,as shown above, which undergo repression andcreate all sorts of moods and problems of behaviour,the origin of which remains unknownto the child and teacher alike.But even at thisage where relationship withthe parents persists in phantasy, the real affectionsof the children slowly leave the parents.Again, the child of this age lives mainly in61

the present. New ties are form Thertfd favoritesare found among the teachers

cause of th 'e months every visit of her mother waspanied by floods of tears. Her develop-about fa*•< .i£ was arrested through her concentrationon her longing, her disappointments and hervarying moods of stubbornness and depression.She entered in July and began at last to settledown about Christmas time. She began totransfer her affections, to be gay and to start allsorts of interests. In January she paid a longvisit to her mother and was very pleasant withher fortwo days.But when her mother asked her on the thirdafternoon whether she would rather stay anothernight or return to the nursery, she said,politely, and sensibly: "Don't you think, mummy,it would be better if we went homeagain"Home in that case, of course referred to thenursery.Not every child expresses matters so clearlyas Mary. But even if the parents are overpossessiveand nothing is done on the side ofthe nursery to fan the mother's jealousy,this situation must be nearly unbearable formothers with a real attachment to their children.Fears of losing the child completely in thisway are often the reason why mothers makesudden decisions to give up work and taketheir children home.At the present moment no one can quite de-63

fine or even make a mental picture of the newshocksof separation and all the innumerabletroubles which will arise when, at the end ofthe war, all these children are deprived oftheir present homes to which they have becomeaccustomed and are expected to "gohome" again.It is specially difficult to predict how thiswill react on those children who entered thenursery in the first six months of life and havenever had any experience of a family situation.NORMAL AND ABNORMAL OUTLETSIt is impossible for children to go throughupheavals of this kind without showing theireffect in "difficult" behaviour and in variationsfrom normality.Infantile nature has certainmeans at its disposal to deal with shocks,deprivations, and upsets in outside life. Otherpsychological methods which are open toadults are not yet available in childhood. Childrenmay therefore go apparently unharmedthrough experiences which would producegrave results in people of another age. On theother hand they may break down completelyunder strain which to the ordinary adult personseems negligible. These peculiarities of thepsychological make-up of the child may accounton the one hand for the astonishing ro-64

ustness of children, on the other hand formost of the problems of behaviour and symptomsabout which all the war nurseriescomplain.Outlet inSpeechWhenever, during the time of 'blitz', motherscame to the Children's Centre after a badnight's bombing, the best we could do for themwould be to provide an interested audience fortheir tales. The kitchen in Wedderburn Roadwould reverberate with descriptions of neighborswho had been killed, possessions whichhad been destroyed, and miraculous rescuesfrom burning shelters. We would even riskthe children hearing more of the events thanwas strictly necessary rather than cut shortmothers when they unloaded their minds ofthese horrors. If they repeated the descriptionoften enough their excitement would subsidevisibly.This most valuable outlet into speech andconscious thought which acts as a drainage foranxiety and emotion is denied to young children.It is possible that they would use thismethod at earlier ages when with theirmothers. Under the conditions of nursery lifethe children do not talk about their frighteningexperiences immediately after they have happened.Among all those 'received at Wedder-65

urn Road after their houses had been bombed,there was not a single one who at that timerelated what had happened.The only child who talked freely aboutbombing experiences was Charlie, who had alwayslived in deep shelters, and heard a greatdeal of talk about bombing but had neverbeen himself in any bombing incident. Aftera period of more than six months had elapsedseveral of these same children suddenly beganto talk about bombing as if it had happenedyesterday. Pamela, four and a half years old,related how her ceiling fell down and how hersister Gloria was all covered by it.Again, four months later, she drew the pictureof a front door of a house and said: "Thedoor is broken, and there is a big hole in it."She knew that the door in the picture wasthe front door of her former home. At thesame time her friend Pauline, five years old,began to describe her bombing experience inthe same way.She dictated letters to her American fosterparents: "My house was bombed one time andmy bath is broken and my windows. And mypussy-cat was hurt by a bomb and was hangingon the guard, and I picked him off andhe jumped on again. And I was down in theshelter with my mammy and granny."In another letter she writes: "My mammv66

and I were under the table and my poor littlesister was in bed all by herself covered withstones, and my pussy-cat was thrown away."Bertram, three years nine months old, was inthe nursery several weeks before he could recountin words the event which had been a terribleshock for him: "My father had 'takenaway my mother in a big car.' "The children who lost their fathers in airraids never mentioned anything of their experiencefor many months. Their mothers wereconvinced that they had forgotten all about it.Then after a year, two of them at least toldthe complete story with no details left out.In allthese instances speech does not serve asan outlet for the emotion which is attachedto the happening. It is rather the other wayround. The child begins to talk about theincident when the feelings which were arousedby it have been dealt with in some othermanner.-Outlet in PlayWhen adults go over their experiences inconscious thought and speech,children do thesame in their play.War games play a part in our nurseryas they do in others. Houses which are builtare not simply thrown over as in formertimes, they are bombed from above, bricks67

i./?being used as bombs. Playing train has givenway to playing aeroplane; the noise of trainsto that of flying 'planes. Games like these willcome more into the foreground after air attacks,and give way to peace time games whenthings are again normal. After the raids inMarch and May 1941, the children, three tofive years old, repeated in play what theyhad seen or heard. The climbing frame in thegarden was used to provide a high point forthe bomber. One child climbed to the highestbar and threw heavy objects on the childrenunderneath. This was also the only time whenone of our children was overheard to mention"gas".A girl, three years old, filled both her handswith sand from the sandbox, threw the sandin the children's faces and said: "This is a gasattack".This game was played without fear but witha great deal of unrestrained excitement. A wargame of adifferent kind was played by Bertie,four years old, at the time when he stillrefused to admit the truth of his father's death.He was ill in bed at the time of the springraids, had a whole tray full of paper houseson his bed and played indefatigably. He wouldbuild the houses up, cover them with theirroofs, and then throw them down with smallmarbles which were his bombs. Whereas in68

the other children's game any number ofpeople were "killed" and in the end everythingwas left in bits and pieces, the point inBertie's play was that all his people were alwayssaved in time and all his houses wereinvariably built up again. The other childrenrepeated incidents of a more impersonal kindin their games; they played active and embellishedversions of events which had actuallyhappened. This served the purpose of reliefand abreaction. Bertie's play, on the otherhand, had the opposite intention—he wantedto deny the reality of what had happened.Since the denial was never completely successfulthe play had to be repeated incessantly—it became compulsive. The games of theotherchildren remained transitory.Bertie stopped playing in this way when,half a year later, he at last gave up his denialand was able to tell his story: "My fatherhas been killed and my mother has gone to thehospital. She will come back at the end ofthe war but he will not return."No war games are played in the Babies'Centre where the oldest children are now aboutthree years, which means that they experiencedbombings when they were lessinthan two.Dolls and teddy bears are usedplay as substitutes for missing families.Children of four or five still69go to bed with

their pets, which they probably would notdo atthat age under normal family conditions.There are several children who will not beseparated from some toy animal which theyhave brought from home and compulsivelyhold it in one hand, if possible even duringwashing, dressing or eating. Lessening of thaiclinging is usually the first sign that the childhas overcome the shock of separation and hasfound new living objects for his affectionLending of a toy of this kind to another childis the sign of greatest love between two children."Mother and child" is played with dollscontinually. In observing the little girls, oneoften feels that the doll does not representthe baby which the child can "mother" binrather that the doll represents the absentmother herself. It is a sign of the greatest enmitybetween two children when they hurteach other's dolls or pet animals.Shelters are, of course, built out ofeverything and take the place of what childrenformerly used to call "playing house."Outlet in BehaviourSome children are unable to express whathas happened to them either in speech or inplay. Instead, they develop behaviour whichseems cranky to the outside world until it canbe recognised.70

With Bertie, four years old, for instance, itseemed for a time as if he were really goingcrazy. He would suddenly interrupt whateverhe was doing, run to the other end of the room,look aimlessly into the corners and returnquietly as if nothing had happened. He woulddistort his face in the most horrible manner.He was restless and excitable, quick to pickquarrels and very worried about his ownhealth; he would not go out without warmclothes even in the summer heat, and so on.showed in time that this was his way of relatinghow his mother had behaved after hisfather was killed and before she went insane.She had aimlessly searched for the father, hadexpressed her grief in an unrestrained manner,had been excitable and quarrelsome andvery worried about the health of the boy. Inthe end it had been Bertie's falling ill withscarlet fever which had completed her breakdown.Bertie, in his behaviour combined theexpression of her emotion, her attitude towardthe people around, her attitude to himself andpossibly even some imitation of his father whois said to have been specially protective andaffectionate towards his family. Curiouslyenough, these reactions reached their highestpoint at the time of the anniversary of thefather's death.Another child, a boy of five, has a very de-7 1It

finite way of demonstrating the scenes whichused to take place in his parents' home. Heflies into violent tempers, turns against thepeople he loves most, attempts to destroy furniture,toys, etc. At the end of the scene he suddenlybecomes gentle and affectionate, demandsto sit on the teacher's lap and sucks his thumb.His father is known to act in a similar mannertowards the mother; he also ends up their violentquarrels with a love scene with his youngwife.With little Bertram, three and a half yearsold, fragments of odd behaviour are the onlymeans of conveying some idea of his past experiences.He will sit at table endlessly, apparentlywithout eating; this means that he hadconflicts about eating at the nursery where helived before coming to ours. He threatensadults that they "get no pudding"; that meansthat now he does to others what he experiencesin a passive way. At bedtime he "actsup" in a curious way; this was found to be hisremembrance of the times when he had beensent to bed for punishment, etc.Examples of this kind could be continuedendlessly. They are instructive insofar as theyshow that past experiences of all kinds appearon the surface in the form of the usual behaviourproblems.72

*\0 u 1 1 e t in PhantasyAs has already been said, conscious phantasiesare used largely to embellish and maintainthe positive side of the child-parent relationship.In early childhood conscious phantasiesare not restricted to the realm of thought.They go over into action and fill a large part ofthechild's life in the form of phantasy games.Conscious phantasy in its pure form—daydreams—findsits fullest expression only at alater stage of development.There is one child who firmly refuses to joinin any games where phantasy is used, whereimpersonations play a part, etc. Bertie getsfrightened and anxious when he isother children tourged by thebe a rabbit, a dog, a wolf, toplay the role of another child, of one of theteachers or whatever the game demands. Hisphantasy is exclusively reserved for dealingwith the tragic story of his parents; it is inhibitedin all other ways.Return to Infantile Modesof Behaviour (Regression)Every step in early education is closely connectedwith one of the phases of the child's attachmentto some living object in the outerworld. During the firstyears of life every childshould make steady and uninterrupted progresstowards social adaptation. It is egoistic73

and narcissistic at the beginning of life. Inthe same measure as its feelings turn awayfrom itself and go out towards mother andfather, the further family and the world beyondthem, the child becomes increasinglyable to restrict and gain control over its owninstincts and to become "social". When somethinghappens to shake its confidence in itsparents or to rob it altogether of its loved objectsit withdraws into itself once more andregresses in social adaptations instead of progressing.The advances it has made in becomingclean, in being less destructive, in modesty,pity and unselfishness, i.e.the first setting up ofmoral ideals within itself, has on the child'spart not only been a sacrifice. It has feltpleasure in these achievements because theywere made for the sake of the parents and thusbrought their own rewards. When the attachmentto the parents is destroyed, all these newachievementslose their value for the child.There is no sense any more in being good,clean or unselfish. When the child rejects itsattachment to the parents who have deserted it,it rejects at the same time many of the moraland social standards which it has alreadyreached. Most of the difficulties shown by childrenwho now fillthe residential war nurseriesare due to such regressions in development.74

\5 B c d WettingWhenever training in cleanliness is achievedin the first few months of life, it is based completelyon reflex action and has nothing to dowith the child's psychological reactions. Experiencehas shown that this early control hasa tendency to break down between the age often and thirteen months, when psychologicalfactors of various kinds enter and complicatethe situation. A second and more lasting controlis then achieved by education proper, thatis by the usual methods of criticism or praise,reward or punishment within the framework ofthe mother-child relationship. It takes timebefore this bladder and sphincter control ispurely automatic. During this time the childwill be clean or dirty according to the steadinessof its relations with the person whobrought it up from dirtiness to cleanliness. Asmall child will normally have a setback inits habits when it changes hands. When thebreak in attachment isas sudden and completeas it has been under the influence of evacuation,even older children may revert to wetting anddirtying themselves. The breakdown in habit;training is one of the expressions of a breakdownof the mother-relationship.This history of bed wetting is only one ofthe many possible reasons for the appearanceof this symptom. Bed wetting can be simply75

caused by neglect; it can, on the other hand,be a complicated neurotic expression and assuch only one symptom in the syndrome of aneurosis. But the wetting and dirtying whichbecame one of the main stumbling blocks ofbilleting are usually not of the more complicatedtype. Their beginning coincided mostlywith the break in the child's attachment, andit often disappeared after a few months whenthe child had succeeded in forming adequatenew relationships.FORMS OF GRATIFICATIONIn the early phase of infancy when the childis still "all selfish", it turns to its own bodyas a source of pleasure. Whenever comfortfrom the outside world is slow in coming orseems inadequate it provides extra pleasurefor itself by sucking its thumb. As it growsolder other parts of the body, its skin, thebody openings, rhythmic muscular movements,the sex parts themselves are used for the samepurpose. Under normal conditions of developmentthese autoerotic gratifications play a certainlimited role in its life. As the child learnsto send its feelings out towards loved objectsit also tries to derive its pleasures from them.When its attachments are interrupted it regressesin this respect as well to its formermethods of finding pleasure. Thumb-sucking76

especially is very much in evidence in all theresidential nurseries. We can observe big childrenof four or five eagerly and intently suckingtheir thumbs as if they were infants lyingin their cribs. There is so far not enoughevidence to show whether the same really appliestothe other forms of autoerotic pleasures,such as rocking, masturbation, etc.GreedUnder the influence of denial and regressionthe child's natural love for food, for sweets, forpresents, is often turned to insatiable greed.Demand for affection is transformed back intoa demand for material gifts. Parcels from theabsent mother or sweets brought by the visitingmother seem for the child as important asthe mother herself. This does not only signifythat the present can be used as a symbol forthe mother; it means that the mother relationshiphas regressed to the stage when the valueof the mother was still measured in terms ofthematerial comfort derived from her person.AggressionUnder the present war conditions two factorscombine to make children at the nursery stagemore aggressive and destructive than they werefound to be in normal times. One factor isthe loosening of early repression and inhibi-77

tion of aggression due to the example of destructionin the outside world. The other isthe return to earlier modes of expression foraggressive tendencies. The bigger child thenbecomes as unrestrained in this respect as ithasbeen in its earliest years. Like a small toddlerit will again be loving and affectionate at onemoment, enraged, full of hate and ready tobite and scratch in the next.Its destructive tendencieswill turn equally towards living peopleand towards lifeless objects.TemperTantrumsReturn to infantile behaviour equally concernsthe nature of the child's wishes and tendenciesand the manner in which the childstrives to get satisfaction for them. Babies canonly announce their needs by crying, screamingand kicking;their disposal tothey have no other means atenforce the arrival of the desiredpleasure. Bigger children can understandthe situation with their reason, they canspeak, ask, demand, they can alter their positionby their own volition, can go and get whatthey want, i.e. they can actively bring aboutall sorts of changes in the outward situation.Normally their wishes should also already befelt with less urgency and despair. When achild of three or four sets up a howl becausethe sweets it wants are not forthcoming or be-78

cause a meal is later than its appetite demands,we have a right to feel that it is "childish".The temper tantrums which are so frequentin all the residential war nurseries seem to bethe combined expression ofthe regressive processalong the whole line of educationalachievement. The children throw themselveson the floor, kick with their feet, hammer withtheir fists, scream at the top of their lungs andthen suddenly turn "good" again, peacefullysuck their thumbs or get up as if nothing hadhappened. It means that they have returnedfrom the sensible active attitude possible forthe growing individual tothe helpless and despairingpassivity of their infant stage.Abnormal Withdrawal of theEmotional Interest from theOutside WorldWith our presentexperience we expect thestate of homesickness to last any length oftime from a few hours to several weeks or evena few months. When this period is over thechild finds itself attached to new people in itsnew surroundings. The new ties may be lesssolid and more superficial than the originalones. As already described, the child startsits new relationships on a more primitive level,and some valuable achievements are lost duringthe process of adaptation. But however79

ig or small that loss may be, the fact remainsthat normally the withdrawal of emotional interestwill be temporary and the child will returnsooner or later to good relations with theoutside world. It is different in cases where,through a series of unlucky circumstances,thechild has to change hands more than once ortwice so that its new attachments are againwasted, and it is deprived of its new objectsas soon as they are found. Its relations topeople will then become more and more superficialand abnormal reactions of some kind willcertainly follow. We were able to observetwo cases of this kind.Johnny had changed his place of living severaltimes between the age of two and three,He had never been separated from his motherup to the age of two, and spent 14 months ofthat time alone with her after father had beendrafted into the army. His wanderings beganwhen his mother fell ill with tuberculosis andwent into a hospital. She once returned fromthe hospital because she heard that he was unhappyin the place where she had left him.She took him home to her relatives in the hopethat she would be able to leave him there.Since all her sisters had gone out on war workthere was nobody to leave him with, and sheagain found a private billet in the country. Sheleft him there to return to the hospital. In the80

meantime he had developed bed wetting sothat the billet would not keep him. Again hebegan to wander until he landed in our countryhouse at the age of three. Observationsshowed that as a result of his experiences hehad become completely and frighteningly impersonal.His face, though very good looking,was expressionless; a stereotyped smile wouldappear at times. He was neither shy nor forward,ready to stay where he was put and didnot seem afraid of the new surroundings. Hemade no distinction between one grown-up andanother, clung to no one and avoided no one.He ate, slept and played and was no troubleto anybody; the only abnormal feature abouthim was that he seemed completely devoid ofall emotion. For several weeks it was verydifficult to get nearer to him in any way. Theice was broken at last when he fell ill and wasisolated with one nurse. Whenever his temperaturewas taken the nurse held him onherlap and put her arm around his shouldersto keep the thermometer in place. Until thenhe had been indifferent to every kind offondling; this special position evidentlyaroused in him memories of being in hismother's arms. He became attached to thenurse, asked repeatedly for "his temperchure"and found the way back to his feelings withthe help of this incident.8!

The second case, Sylvia, three and a halfyears old, showed even worse abnormality.She holds the record with six different billetsbetween the age of two and three. Her parentsare highly skilled war workers who senther to the country at the beginning of thewar with her older sisters' evacuation schoolparty. She was unhappy in some billets, notwell treated in others, and had to leave oneplace after the other because her foster mothersfell ill, went to hospital etc. In the end shebecame completely confused and failed to recogniseher own mother though both parentsvisited in turns nearly fortnightly. Her emotionalwithdrawal from the outside world wasthe same as Johnny's, all her other reactionswere exactly opposite. Where Johnny showedcomplete lack of emotion she had emotionaloutbreaks of an hysterical type— fits of cryingalternated with fits of laughing. Where Johnnywas easy to handle, she was impossible. Whenshe came to our nursery she would not go tobed, could not sleep, would not eat, foughtagainst being bathed, washed, dressed or undressed.She had fears of going downstairs, ofleaving the house, of entering again throughthe front door. Sometimes she would like toplay with other children, at other times shescreamed with fear when they approached herWhen she returns from a visit to her par-

ents' home where she is now sent regularly,she tells phantastic tales about the events whichhappen there. Everybody pushes everybodyelse, her sisters hit her on the head, she ispushed into the fire and everything burns up.There are no bombing experiences at the rootof Sylvia's fears. She is one among the fewof our children who escaped the London airraids through early evacuation to the country.As a consequence of the shock of her repeatedseparations she has developed a neurotic illnesswhich is so far difficult to diagnose. Hystericalsymptoms alternate with phobic behaviourand compulsive mechanisms. The mainfeature isher withdrawal from the interests ofthe real outer world. Her expression is alwaysworried, her glance fixed and stony. There islittle hope that, like Johnny, she will find anatural return to normality. She is ill enoughto need and receive psycho-analytical treatmentfor her neurosis.PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONSAt first glance it seems from this materialas if small children had little chance to escapeunharmed from the present war conditions.They either stay in the bombed areas withtheir parents and, quite apart from physicaldanger, get upset by their mothers' fears andexcitements, and hardened and brutalised by83

the destruction which goes on around them andby shelter life. Or else they avoid these dangers,are evacuated to the country and suffer othershocks through separation from the parents atan age which needs emotional stability andpermanency. Choosing between two evilsseems to be all that war-time care is able toaccomplish forthem.On the other hand we should not be tooquick in drawing such conclusions. That evacuationunder the present conditions is as upsettingas bombing itself is no proof yet thatmethods of evacuation could not be foundwhich guard the children's life and bodilyhealth and atthe same time provide the possibilityfor normal psychological developmentand steady progress in education.Our case material shows that it is not somuch the fact of separation to which thechild reacts abnormally as the form in whichthe separation has taken place. The childexperiences shock when it is suddenly andwithout preparation exposed to dangers withwhich it cannot cope emotionally. In the caseof evacuation the danger is represented bythe sudden disappearance of all the peoplewhom it knows and loves. Unsatisfied longingproduces in it a state of tension which isfelt as shock. If separation happened slowly,if the people who are meant to substitute for84

the mother were known to the child beforehand,transition from one object to the otherwould proceed gradually. If the mother reappearedseveral times during the period whenthe child had to be weaned from her, the painof separation would be repeated, but it wouldbe felt each successive time in smaller doses.By the time the affection of the child had letgo of the mother the new substitute objectwould be well known and ready at hand. Therewould be no empty period in which the feelingsof the child are turned completely inwardand, consequently, there would be littleloss of educational achievement. Regressionoccurs while the child is passing through theno-man's-land of affection, i.e. during the timethe old object has been given up and before thenew one has been found. Two of our childrenhave expressed this state of mind in their ownwords.Bertram, three and three-quarters years old,said: "I don't like you, I don't like anybody!I only like myself". Ivan, five years old, exclaimed:"I am nobody's nothing".Mothers are commonly advised not to visittheir children during the first fortnight afterseparation. It is the common opinion thatthe pain of separation will then pass morequickly and cause less disturbance. In realityit is the very quickness of the child's break85

with the mother which contains all the dangersof abnormal consequences. Long drawn-outseparation may bring more visible pain but itis less harmful because it gives the child timeto accompany the events with his reactions, towork through his own feelings over and overagain, to find outward expressions for his stateof mind, i.e. to abreact slowly. Reactions whichdo not even reach the child's consciousness cando incalculable harm to its normality.Objection might be raised that emergencywar conditions do not allow considerations ofthis kind to carry weight. Still, it seems possibleto base plans for "evacuation in slowstages"on psychological convictions of thiskind.If children under five have to be evacuated,unattended like their bigger brothers and sistersthey should at least not be sent out underharder conditions than the older ones.children, even ifSchoolthey lose the connection withtheir homes, will at least retain the relationshipto their school friends and to theirteachers who go out with them. Under-fiveswho are sent to nurseries go into the completeunknown.One could conceive a plan under which allsmall children would be collected in day nurseries.They would get attached to their nursesand teachers and know the units in which they86

spend their days while they still live at home.In times of danger these day nurseries wouldbe converted into residential nurseries andwould be evacuated collectively. Mothers whorefuse to part from their small children couldbe offered the chance to go too as paid domesticstaff.Experience has shown that only a smallpercentage of all mothers would choose to doso. Under such conditions evacuation wouldlose its horrors for the young child and abnormalreactions to it would become extremelyrare. To maintain the remnants of the parentrelationship as far as possible and simultaneouslyto prepare the way for the return ofchildren to their homes after the war, thereshould be little or no restriction of visitingrules. In our houses parents come and go whenevertheir occupations leave them free to doso. Provision should be made for the possibilityof such visits, as it is made for all theother bodily and educational needs of the childinsofar as they are considered to be important.It will be still harder to devise proper meansof evacuation for small babies. If infants haveto be separated from their mothers in the firstweeks of life in the interest of war work, it isbest they go to creches near factories wheremothers can deposit and collect them. Thisagain does not solve the problem of sheltersleeping in times of danger. If babies go to87

esidential homes these should be situated asnear to the outskirts of the town as possible toencourage frequent visiting, With infants therearc no "remnants of a mother relationship" tomaintain, and no memories to keep alive.Thebaby will have to make the acquaintance of hismother during the hours or days of visiting.There should certainly be some relation betweenthe frequency of visits and the abilityreached by the infant to retain remembrance.88

REPORTS

The previous part of the book isbasedon case-history notes drawn from dailycontact with a living,war-time laboratory.The succeeding reports give the reader anopportunity to follow intimately the eventsas they occurred and thus see how AnnaFreud and Dorothy Burlingham reachedtheir conclusions.

January-February, 1941HAMPSTEAD NURSERYIn day-time the life of the children does notdiffer in any way from that of an institutionunder peace-time conditions. The childrenplay, paint, draw, sing, dance in the nurseries;go for walks in the street or play in our gardenwhere they learn climbing on a jungle gym.We disregard day-light raids except for callingthe children in from the garden or the streetwhen the sirens go on. Londoners otherwise ignoreday-light raids except when a plane isheard directly overhead. But it is thought besttokeep children home during raids as much aspossible, to avoid the chance of their beinghit by odd pieces of shrapnel.Every evening, whether there is an air-raidor not, the children are settled down in theirshelter beds,the shelter taking the place of anordinary bed-room. This is much wiser thanputting the children to bed upstairs and onlytaking them to shelter when the sirens go. Theroutine of their waking and sleeping remainsin this way independent of air-raids and lulls.They go to bed at their usual time and there isno need to disturb them when hostilities beginoutside.93

AllayingFearEven children whose mothers claimed thatthey had been badly frightened by raidsshowed, surprisingly enough, little interest insirens, bombs, guns or "all clears."A girl of four years suggested to the kindergartenteacher who was trying to quiet anoisychild in his shelter bed that, if he would notpromise to be good, she should "take him upstairsto a danger-room".A little girl of three and a half years, beingasked whether she was pleased to see a visitinguncle, says crossly: "No, I want him bombed."Our big girls, six and nine years old, whenwe take them for a walk and pass by damagedhouses make expert casual remarks: "Incendiarybomb". This is where the roof is burnedout. "High explosive". This is where the wallsare badly shaken.The same two girls tellabout the time whenthey still lived with their parents in a badlybombed area: "Every evening when the firstbombs came down, Daddy would grab his coatand run out to help and mummy would alwayscall after him: 'Don't forget that we have twospare beds and bring in people if you findthem homeless'."Children whose parents behave inthat way,naturally show no sign of fear themselves.The father says of the six year old girl:94

"You would have to drop a bomb down herbackbefore she would take notice!"It is different with the two of our childrenwho were brought in by excessively nervousmothers, women who had developed states ofgrave anxiety after having been bombed, oneat home and one in a shelter. Those mothersused to pull their children out of bed andstand around trembling; one child stood nearhis mother all night, unable to leave her. Theynaturally imparted their own fears to theirchildren. But even these children, after theseparation from their mothers, quickly losetheir state of tension and settle down to ordinarylife.ParentCo-operationWe were warned in the beginning that wewould find the London parents of the poorerclasses to be rather unappreciative, critical andonly too glad to dump their children on usand forget all about them and their furtherobligations. What we experience is exactly theopposite. With the exception of three motherswhom one can hardly regard as responsiblepersonalities, one can only admire the effortswhich the parents make for their childrenunder the worst possible conditions, their attemptsat co-operation with us and their realdelight at every chance which is offered to95

their children. They appreciate every improvementin health, weight or the happiness of thechild.Parents of this class are used to obeyinghospital rules regarding visiting. They aresurprised and delighted when they hear thatwe are glad to have them come at any time.Iftheir occupation allows, they can come freelyto take their children out for walks, bathethem, put them to bed in the evening, andshare theirmeals without any undue interferencewith our household routine. In practicethis only happens during week-ends when ourhome sometimes takes on the character of acoffee house, club or restaurant.It is true that in this way children take alonger time to get over the separation fromtheir parents and the repeated "separations"after visiting days are often followed by outburstof crying and violent emotions. But weconsider this slower method of overcomingthe shock of separation as much less harmful tothe child than the traumatic one usual inevacuation when many little children who havenever been away from their mothers for a singlenight, are suddenly taken from them, notto see them again for weeks or even months.96

Marchi'HlTHE SHOCK OF SEPARATIONLife in London has been greatly influencedby the fact that bombing was less regular andthat there was even along succession of quietnights. The very few bad air-raids that occurreddid no damage in the immediate neighborhoodof the Nursery.Since darkness comes later, the children areusually asleep now before any noise is to beheard. The exception was one evening raidwhen noise of terrific anti-aircraft fire struckthe children at the time of settling down tosleep. There was one child only, Charlie, fourand a half years old, who showed genuine signsof anxiety.Pauline, four and a half years old,who usually adopts a motherly attitude towardshim as a playmate, advised him to"cover himself right over" as she always didin such cases. All other children did not seemto pay overmuch attention either to the dangeror toCharlie's state of anxiety.It may be interesting to note in this respectthat Charlie, who is the child most easily worriedabout war dangers, is one of the fewchildren in the house who has not beenthrough the experience of being actually bombed.Pauline on the other hand is one of the"bombed" children. A bomb which fell in the07

street next to the one in which she lived withher mother and grandmother took off theroof of her house and destroyed the attic roomfrom which the family had just escaped downstairsa few seconds before.With other children also over-sensitiveness todanger seems to have nothing to do with theactual experience of bombing which has gonebefore. We can still only see that the children'sfears are to a large extent dependent on theirparents' anxieties wherever it is existent. Afterseparation from those parents, fears either vanishor decrease. Anxiety of playmates does notseem to be infectious in the same sense.A closer examination of the applications receivedshows that the children most physicallyendangered by the present state of affairs arethose up to two years of age. It is easy tounderstand that infants simply cannot live ina state of emergency. The same conditionswhich to the fully developed individual onlymean a passing state of discomfort of body ormind are capable of completely arresting orseriously damaging the development of thegrowing human being. The younger and moreundeveloped the individual the more seriousthe consequences. We have, after all, alwaysknown that development demands its own conditions,irrespective of war and peace or allother happenings inthe outer world.98

PatrickPatrick, a boy of three years and two months,of pleasing appearance, well built and ratherbig for his age, was sent to us after one unsuccessfulattempt at evacuation tothe country.In the billet where he had been placed, he had,as the report stated, "fretted" so much for hismother that he was sent back to her after avery few days.short duration.Unluckily their reunion was ofHe contracted measles and hadto suffer another enforced separation from hismother. After dismissal from hospital shebrought him directly to us since she had beenwarned not to take him after illness to theTube station where she herself was sleepingregularly with her husband. She admonishedhim to be "a good boy", and promised to visithim if he would promise not to cry for her.The state of affairs that devleoped after sheleft was a most unhappy one. Patrick triedto keep his promise and was not seen crying.Instead he would nod hishead whenever any-himself andone looked at him and assuredanybody who cared to listen with the greatestshow of confidence that his mother wouldcome for him, that she would put on his overcoatand would take him home with her again.Whenever a listener seemed to believe himhe was satisfied; whenever anybody contradictedhim, he would burst into violent tears.99

This same state of affairs continued throughthe next two or three days with several additions.The nodding took on a more compulsiveand automatic character: "My mother willput on my overcoat and take me home again."Later an ever growing list of clothes thathis mother was supposed to put on him wasadded: "She will put on my overcoat and myleggings, she will zip up the zipper, she willput on my pixie hat."When the repetitions of this formula becamemonotonous and endless, somebody asked himwhether he could not stop saying it all overagain. Again Patrick tried to be the good boythat his mother wanted him to be. He stoppedrepeating the formula aloud but his movinglips showed that he was saying it over andover to himself.At the same time he substituted for thespoken words gestures that showed the positionof his pixie hat, the putting on of an imaginarycoat, the zipping of the zipper etc. Whatshowed as an expressive movement one day,was reduced the next to a mere abortive flickerof his fingers. While the other children weremostly busy with their toys, playing games,making music etc., Patrick, totally uninterested,would stand somewhere in a corner, movehis hands and lips with an absolutely tragicexpression on his face. These movements also100

would not stop when he was dressing or eating,going up or downstairs. He refused mostkinds of food but would drink milk plentifully.We were shocked to see an apparentlyhealthy child develop a compulsive tie underour very eyes. All attempts to get in contactwith him were unsatisfactory. Not thatit was impossible to break in on his compulsivebehaviour with understanding words, affectionand sympathy. But in such moments,instead of reiterating his false assurances, hewould break through to the truth, burst intotears and develop an excess of grief that onefelt at a loss how to meet.From the second day on we had made attemptsto reach his mother and induce her tovisit him regularly. Unluckily again she hadfallen ill with a bad influenza and was lying ina hospital. A Sunday afternoon visit from hisfather did not bring the slightest comfort. Ittook more than a week before his mother wasdismissed from the hospital. She came immediatelyto us. We discussed the situationwith her and persuaded her to stay in ourhouse for a while.The aspect of Patrick's state changed immediately.He dropped his symptom and insteadclung to his mother with the utmosttenacity. For several days and nights hewould hardly leave her side. Whenever she101

went upstairs or downstairs,Patrick was trailingafter her. Whenever she disappeared fora minute we could hear his anxious questioningthrough the house, or see him open thedoor of every room and look searchingly intoevery corner. No one was allowed to touchhim, his mother bathed him, put him to sleepand had her shelter bed next to his.A few days were sufficient to do away alsowith this abnormal state of affairs. SlowlyPatrick lost his excessive clinging and turnedat times to the other children to join in theirplay. His mother was first allowed to go homefor an hour to cook a meal for his father. Hewould wait anxiously for her reappearance andsigns of the former anxiety would show inhis expression. But after a further week ortwo these symptoms also disappeared. Patrick'smother was allowed to come and go freely andPatrick became a member of the Nursery likeany other child.At the present time he is one of the mostactive children in the playroom; his rathergirlish mannerisms having changed to definitelyboyish behaviour. He jumps and climbs, isvery good at building and keeps busy frommorning till night. He is a very good eater,only satisfied after repeated helpings.After some consideration, we offered themother, who is an unusually fine woman and102

has at some former time been employed ascharwoman in a day Nursery, the paid post ofemergency night nurse in our two shelters.That means that she still spends five nightsweekly in the same house with Patrick, theother two at home or in the Tube station withher husband. But it does not seem to affectPatrick now whether she sleeps in or out.The interesting point about that story isthatit does not seem to be the fact of separationfrom the mother to which the child reacts inthis abnormal manner, but the traumatic wayin which this separation takes place. Patrickcan dissociate himself from his mother whenhe is given three or four weeks to accomplishthis task. If he has to do it all in one dayit is a shock to which he answers with the productionof symptoms. That means that evenchildren with the neurotic possibilities of Patrick'skind could be spared much unnecessarysuffering and symptom formation by more carefulhandling.April 1041FURTHER OBSERVATIONSAn outstanding event during this month wasthe big air attack on London on the night ofWednesday, 16th of April. Even for peoplewho had gone through the period of so called103

Blitz in September and October 1940, theevents of this night were rather surprising andalarming. There was more gun fire than everbefore, the sound of falling bombs was continuous,the crackling of fires which had beenstarted could be heard in the distance andagain all these sounds were drowned by theincessant droning of air planes which flew overLondon, not in successive waves as in formerraids, but in one uninterrupted stream from9 p.m. until 5 a.m.The elder members of the staff were, ofcourse, awake and patrolled the house, theyounger members went down from their atticbedrooms and joined the children in the shelter.The children themselves, to our astonishment,slept peacefully as usual and never noticedwhat was going on above them.Whether it was due to the fact that theheavy wooden beams of the shelter ceilinglessens all noise, or whether the quiet atmospherein which they had fallen asleep carriedthem through the restlessness of the night outside,—thefacts are that no one took noticeexcept Patrick who satup suddenly and said:"Gun fire."His mother who was on shelter duty answered:"Yes, but gun fire does not hurt anybody",whereupon Patrick lay down and sleptagain.104

Pamela woke up as usual and asked to beput on the pot but remained completely obliviousof the bombing. The two babies Grahamand Roy woke once and cried for a whilebut since that happened nearly every night,is difficult to determine whether it had anyconnection with the outside noises.Everybody slept in the shelter after the"All Clear". The morning, of course, wasdifferent than usual. Whoever came in fromthe outside brought tales of damage and destruction.Our old job man who lives in amore exposed district can, on such occasions,hardly be stopped from counting corpses andrevelling inlike to listen eagerly.lurid details to which the childrenIn the garden, later in the morning, the childrenhad occasion to watch an airplane inthe sky.An adult said: "Look, it is writing!"A statement which Pamela corrected by saying:"Only scribbling."None of the children seemed to connect thesight of an airplane with the idea of possibledanger. Still, the children seemed rather morerestless or excitable than usual as a result of thetales which they had overheard.They were watched playing a new kind ofgame. Some of them climbed up on the junglegym, and regardless of danger to those stand-105it

ing underneath, tried to drop a heavy ironshoe scraper onto them, which they had removedfrom the doorstep and carried up to theheights. When warned not to do this, theyproudly asserted that this was a bomb whichthey were about to drop.Little Barbara who had not been big orstrong enough to join in the game, suddenlybrought a handful of sand, threw it onto theothers and declared it was a "gas bomb". Sincethe sand got into the children's faces and eyes,this game was not found to be enjoyable.Nothing further of an unusual kind happenedduring the rest of the day. Also the childrenshowed no anxiety when they were putto bed in the evening.Only three days later, on Saturday night,when again a bigger raid seemed to develop,little Jill suddenly asked: "Are the Germanscoming again?"But she did not pursue the subject nor didfear develop.IdentificationIris, three years ten months old, had beensent tous originally partly because her familyhad been bombed out, partly because of anervouscough which she had started soon afterher father died as the result of lung trouble.When living with us her nervous symptom?106

came and went. Lately, she had been free fromit for some time. During April she fell ill withtonsillitis. While she was in bed with a temperature,her nervous cough returned and developedinto a regular attack of asthma bronchiale,with all the usual somatic accompaniments.Her tonsillitis together with her asthmadisappeared within a few days. She was wellfor a while and then again returned to thesickroom with a slight cold aggravated by herusual nervous cough. So far we understandlittle about the origin and development ofIris' symptom. There isthe suspicion, of course,that her cough had started in imitation of herfather's cough.The mother herself reports that a neighboursuddenly said to her: "Don't you notice, Mrs.Coster, that Iris coughs exactly the way herfather did."A tendency for hysterical identification isvery evident in Iris' case. She picks up habitsfrom the other children, adopts them as herown, drops them again after a while and picksup new ones. In the beginning, when she hadformed a friendship with Barbara, a little girlof her own age, she suddenly started the sametemper tantrums that had made Barbara conspicuousin the house. Though she is no thumbsucker herself, she suddenly started sucking herthumb in a way that is peculiar to Keith, a boy107

more than a year her junior.Her latest habitis a sort of grimacing, the origin of which, weare at the moment attempting to find amongthe other members of the house. It is interestingto note that during every illness, her noticeableaffection for the doctor is greatly increased.This was particularly marked duringthe periods of asthma when the presence of thedoctor helped to lessen her anxiety during attacks.SeparationWhile daily all over England more andmore children are separated from their mothersand evacuated for the sake of safety, ourinterest is still held by the various possible resultsof such separations.JillWe had another opportunity of observingthe worst effects of sudden separation in Jill,a little girl, two and a half years old. In acceptingJill we gave in to the urging of hermother who was frightened that the childwould either be infected with TB by thegrandmother with whom she shared the roomor with some kind of shelter disease in thevery primitive place where they all spent thenights. The mother seemed rather desperateand worn out with anxiety. She begged us tolet Jill benefit by the favourable conditions inIMS

our house, at least for the few weeks which shewould need to find a billet in the country forherself together with the child.Jill was a beautiful little girl, marvelouslydeveloped, sparkling with life and gaiety andseemed extremely independent for her age. Itwas this very independence of the child togetherwith her evident interest in the toys, theother children and the new surroundings whichdecided us to fall in with the mother's wishes.Jill was taken to the nursery where she wasdeep in play after a few minutes. She saidgood bye to her mother in a friendly way buthardly noticed when her mother left her. Onlyhalf an hour after her mother had left thehouse, Jill suddenly realised what had happened.She interrupted her play, rushed out ofthe nursery and opened every door in the houseto look for her mother in the room behind it.In her running around she behaved exactly likea stray dog who has lost his master.This lasteda few minutes and then she rejoined the playgroup.These attacks of frantic search repeatedthemselves with ever greater frequency. Jill'sexpression changed, her brightness disappeared,her smiles gave way to an unusually sullenfrown which changed the whole aspect of thechild. It is difficult to say, of course, whetherthissullenness of Jill's was completely new or109

whether this was the way in which she hadreacted already to difficulties in her formerlife.The hope that Jill with her outgoing mannerwould soon attach herself exclusively to someadult person in the house was not fulfilled.Her interest seemed to turn first to one of theworkers in the nursery itself but before a realattachment was formed she suddenly developeda great liking for our nurse and clung to herwith unexpected affection. But also this attachmenthad no time to ripen. Jill suddenlyshowed a decided preference for men, turnedto all male visitors, claimed other children'sdaddies loudly as her own and would on eveningsor Sunday afternoon sit for hours on avisitor's or fire watcher's lap, much to themen's embarrassment. Her attitude was littleinfluenced by visits from her mother who cameat times and took her out for walks. Her preferencefor men would indicate that her af-had turned from her mother to her fa-fectionther; but when, during her stay with us, herfather suddenly appeared on army leave, shedid not appear to treat him differently fromother visitors.Something had evidently gone completelywrong in her relations with the grown-upworld.Her outstanding symptom was the continualabandoning of people she was attached110

to at the moment, for the sake of others whowere new to her.Whereas in Patrick's case separation fromthe mother had brought on a compulsive clingingto her memory, in Jill's case the result wasoutwardly the opposite.She lost the stable relationshipto her parents which had so fargoverned her life, was unable to form newattachments and lived continually in search andexpectation accompanied by feelings of deep-discontent. We know this symptom of flightfrom one object to the other in adult neuroticsas one of the results of early disturbances oftheir mother relationship.Though Jill's symptoms quieted down andwere less apparent after a few weeks, especiallyafter a prolonged stay in the sickroom whereshe was surrounded by a quiet home-like atmosphere,she never regained her high spiritsand bright appearance which had been heroutstanding characteristics when she came.Jill's mother found her billet in the countryand took her off according to arrangement aftershe had been with us for eight weeks. In hercase the physical advantages of being savedfrom shelter life were outweighed by the shockthe separation from her mother meant for her.She was given no time for psychic preparation.On the one hand separation was too complete,on the other hand her stay under the new con-111"

ditions was too short to make up for all themisery of adaptation.Hetty andChristineThe two next examples are meant to showtwo children under the influence of an identicalsituation where the handling was completelydifferenteach time.Hetty, two years one month old, and Christine,seventeen months old, were both broughtto stay while their mothers went to the hospitalto be delivered of another baby.In Hetty's case this was done with foresightand intelligent planning from the mother'sside. She brought her as a day child morethan two months before the expected birththe new baby. She helped the child througha period of adaptation to daily life shared withother children which was by no means easy.Hetty was shy, at times aggressive, withdrawnand often unresponsive. She slowly accustomedherself to the nursery. A week before the expectedconfinement she entered the house asa boarder, slept in the shelter with the otherchildren whom she already knew well but wasrewarded in day time by frequent visits fromher mother. When her mother at last disappearedinto the maternity hospital, Hetty wasused to her new surroundings, felt at home andshowed no ill effects of any kind.112of

Christine, on the other hand was brought twoor three days previous to her mother's confinementand left at once and completely thoughshe had never before left her mother's side andhad evidently been taken care of very well byher mother. She found herself unexpectedly incompletely strange surroundings to which shereacted in a most bewildered way.For days she sat or stood around quietly orcrying and would only at intervals say:Mum".She did it in a surprisingly deep voice."Mum,Similarly to Jill, but again in a completelydifferent manner, she would sometimes stretchout her arms to visitors. She was at times contentwhen she could sit on somebody's lap withher face averted. Probably she imagined herselfin this position to be sitting on her mother'slap without being disturbed by the sightof a strange face.She fell ill about a week after her arrivaland reacted during her illness with apathy andIistlessness. In the last week, when she wasgradually getting better in the sickroom shewas at last reported to have smiled and evenjoined in play with other children.Again, these descriptions show that it isnot the task of separation from the mother itselfwhich is impossible to accomplish for thesmall child. The decisive factor for the normal113

or abnormal outcome seems to be the timegiven, which after all means the presence orabsence of traumatic chock.In this case of a nervously unstable motherand child it was certainly only the ample timegiven for adaptation which prevented seriousoutbreaks of neurotic symptoms and behaviour.May 1941REACTION TO AIR-RAIDSThere were many people who felt that thegreat air attacks of Saturday, May 10th, wereeven worse than those of April 16th.Curiouslyenough, there was not the same state of excitementand restlessness on the day after. Whenour old gardener again appeared with thestory of a big bomb, nobody believed him.Whether it was the feeling that we again hadhad a lucky escape, or whether it was that thistime not one among our parents had sufferedpersonally, the facts are that the Sundayfollowing, the raid developed into the mostpeaceful day, we had experienced in the Centre.It was the first sunny springlike Sunday. Parentscame and went from morning tillevening,sat down to meals, or walked around our garden,watching their children at play.Through this atmosphere of peace it slowlytranspired that our old gardener had after allbeen right in his report. Next morning, we114

noticed that the neighbouring house and thestreet leading to it were roped off. When wequestioned the police, we were told the following:there was a possibility that the bombmight still explode—in that case it would bringdown the next house; ours was considered to bejust outside the danger zone but on no accountshould we let the children go into thegarden.We were grateful to escape the great discomfortof being evacuated on the spot becauseit would have been none too easy to find goodaccomodation for 34 children at short notice.We kept the children in the house for onewhole day; after that, we were offered the loanof a garden just across the street. Our childrenwere only too happy to be released from imprisonmentagain and from then on the dailySince the weather was warm and sunnyroutine was changed to meet the new conditions.our house stayed deserted most of the time.procession of our children was continually onits way either to or from that other garden, theolder children with a weak attempt to walk inorderly fashion, the toddlers escaping in alldirections and the babies being wheeled overin their baby carriages.A bomb at a great distance may be an objectof horror. A bomb, on the other hand, whichsettles down so near to115Aone's own household is

somehow included in it and soon becomes anobject of familiarity. It is true that on thefirst day an unexploded bomb is contemplatedwith respect and suspicion. When it delaysexploding, the reaction innot,the people around isas one should expect—one of thankfulnessand relief. The reaction is rather one of annoyancewith it which develops into contemptfor the bomb as the days go by. The bomb istreated more like an impostor who has formedus into an attitude of submission under falsepretences. In the end, when no one believesin its explosiveness any more, it sinks down tothe position of being a bore.Since the children know of course about thissituation, we watched them closely for signs ofanxiety. But in spite of the fact that most ofthem had been driven out of their homes bybomb explosions they did not seem to connectthe idea of the bomb with the idea of possibledanger.Even Constance, nine years old, was heardto say in an angry tone: "I wish the bombwould explode so that we can use the gardenagain."The nursery children were mostly impressedby the fact that our garden was closed to them.They were resigned during the first week. Onthe tenth day a group of them after meal timesuddenly dashed for the garden entrance.116

When caught and brought back, Pamela insisted:"There is no bomb".When this was turned down, they allscreamed in chorus: "There is no bomb! Weare going out in the garden!"Pamela then came inagain and said firmly:"It has exploded".This attitude of denying what isunpleasantand disturbing in reality is natural enough tochildren. It is more surprising that also ourgrown up staff was not inclined to act otherwise.Our social worker decided that this wasthe appropriate time to give the garden a reallygood overhaul. Whatever grass had survivedon the children's playground was cut, anew sandpit dug, and the jungle gym repainted.Whenever anyone triedto send a member ofthe staff out of the garden, he was met with theindignant remark that after all "the bombwould not go off just at this moment".Though certainly all our windows wouldhave been smashed if the explosion had occurred,no one in the house was ever seen tokeep away from windows.Our bomb once more became impressivewhen after much hard labour a bomb disposaldetachment of soldiers had dug it out of itscrater and loaded it on a truck to be removed.Its presence in the street, which by now had117

een re-opened,excited much comment amongthe passersby. We saw mothers lift small babiesto admire it and everybody watched whilethe soldiers tied red silk ribbons to the rearof the car as a sign of danger in the case ofcollision. They sat all around it and drove offjoking and singing.When the good news that the bomb hadgone was spread in the house, we again watchedfor reactions of relief. All we could findwas an immediate desire on the part of thechildren toregain possession of the garden.Charlie, four years ten months, asked withgreat interest whether the soldiers had driventhe bomb off "in a lorry". To him the everfascinating question of transport was more outstandingthan the danger element implied.The complete reversal of all values was mostthe way our social workerdistinctly shown inmet the good news. He said : "I wish they hadleft it two days longer so that the jungle gymwould have had time todry."When the soldiers returned to fill up theempty crater they were invited to have tea inour dining room where the children met them.It was at this occasion that some of the childrenshowed definite signs of fear or anxiousness."Fear of the bomb" was quite outside therange of their infantile emotions.big man" is"Fear of thea recognised and typical childhood118

fear. That the bomb meant real danger tothem and the "big men" protection against itdid not play a part in the situation.Some of the children were perfectly natural,played with the soldiers, made friends withthem and tried on their caps. Patrick put onan overboisterous and joking manner whichhe only does when he is afraid of something.Pauline and Iris on the other hand coveredtheir eyes with their hands and could not beinduced to look at the soldiers.OrphansArtificialWe found to our own astonishment whenquestioning the parents about a possible evacuationof their children toa country place thatthe same mothers who three months earlierrefused to be separated from the children completelywould be now perfectly ready to letthem go. Much has been said in the newspapers,by various authorities and in the receptionareas about the unreliability of motherswho will send their children to the country oneday and drag them back to the bombed areasa week later. We so far have not had a singleexperience of this kind.The psychic problem of the infant who hasbeen evacuated is not easy to solve. For a childunder three years of age it is extremely difficultto maintain a normal emotional relationship119

with an absent love object. We say in ordinarylanguage that the small child forgets quickly.It really means that the material and emotionalneeds of the child cannot be satisfied from thedistance. The love of the infant for his motherisclosely bound up with the fulfilment of theseneeds. If the mother is absent, the child forms,after a short period of longing, a new relationshipto a substitute mother. The relation to thereal mother has become unsatisfactory and isdriven from consciousness.We can only surmise from later behaviourwhat changes it has undergone inside and whathas become of it. Normally this period of"mourning" lasts only a very few days. Afterthat, if the mother does not show herself again,the child settles down "quite happily". Wherethe psychic make-up of the child is more advancedor more complicated, adaptation takes alonger time. Some children will cling to thememory of their mother in a compulsive manner.We have given an example of this type ofbehaviour in the case of Patrick. Others willbuild up a constant phantasy of family life,itinputin the place of the lost reality and work it offplay.The most serious objection against war timeevacuation of young children without theirmothers is, therefore, that it produces artificialorphans. It is common knowledge that after the120

death of the father or mother small childrenbehave as if their parents had just gone away.We can certainly say that when parents haveonly "gone away" the children behave as ifthey had died. This only means to say that theimportant factor for the small child is bodilyabsence or presence of the mother. The questionof existence or non-existence in the realworld seems to be beyond the child's emotionalcomprehension.But even though, in that sense, allthese littlechildren who are separated from their parentsare war orphans, the attitude of the worldaround is to disregard the identity of the innerpsychic situation of the two kinds of childrenand cling to the importance of the outer reality.The child whose parents have been killedin an air-raid is an object of pity and all thedifficulties that he shows seem somehow naturaland are met with tolerance. The child who isonly billeted in the country while his parentscontinue to live in London is only consideredto "fret" and expected to get over it "in notime". Therefore it is precisely the study ofthe real war orphan and his reactions whichmay be of help to create a better understandingofthe "evacuated" child.121

PARENTS AND CHILDRENJune-July 1941Since Patrick's recovery he had seen hismother almost daily or at least four or fivetimes a week while she worked on night dutyin our shelter. She had to stop her duties becauseof her pregnancy with a new baby andin the eighth month of pregnancy went to thehospital with varicose veins. She was immediatelyevacuated to the country.Patrick, on our insistence, was permitted tosee her once before she went but was, of course,unable to visit her again during the last threeweeks. To our own astonishment he remainednormal this time. Slight signs of anxiousnessand disturbance disappeared after his one visitto the hospital. Since then he has remainedperfectly normal, has not changed his behaviouror his activities in the nursery and has notshown compulsive symptoms of any kind.The only faint traces of his former troubleare an occasional overinsistence in askingwhether his "daddy is sure to come and takehim out on Sunday", and a certain withdrawalof interest when his mother is mentioned byoutsiders. On the other hand, he quite normallyquestions his father about his mother's whereabouts,is perfectly aware of the whole situationand even passes on to us reports about his122

mother's state of health. He can now sensiblymanage the same situation which made him illbefore. This would be easy to understand if inthe meantime he had undergone psychic treatment.Since this has not been the case, thefactor responsible for the change is evidentlythe time factor. As stated before, he was ableto digest in the course of several months thesame experience which had acted on him astraumati c shock when he had been only givena few hours to adapt to the situation.Under the conditions in our house wherechildren see the parents from whom they areseparated fortnightly, weekly and in somecases even two or three times a week, it isinstructive to follow the changes which theparent-child relationship undergoes. The firstthree or four visitsby the mother usually havethe sole effect of reproducing the shock of theoriginal separa tion. The children long for thecoming of the parents, greet them with allsigns of pleasure, cling to them during theirvisit and usually burst into tears at the renewedparting. After this experience has been repeatedseveral times the parting loses its dramaticsignificance and the children seem to feelcertain that the mother who disappears willreappear again.This period of overvaluation of theparents lasted,perhaps three months—with the123a

older children three and four years of age.During the last month we entered into a newphase of the parent-child relationship. Thechildren were still very pleased to see theirparentsbut the time spent with them was notas greatly valued as before.For example, Beverly's parents say: "Shehardly talks to us when we take her out for awalk and whenever she sees another child shewants torun and play with her".Rosemary's mother will sit for hours on endon her visiting days and never say a word.Rosemary dutifully stands next to her and remainsas silent as her mother. As soon as hermother is gone, she revives and returns to herusual activity and endless talking. David whoreceives visits from his mother very often runsback to the other children afterwards as if hewere afraid of having missed too much.All this is of course the natural process ofshifting affection and interest which is so wellknown in children of boarding school age.BertieThe child for whom the loss of his parentshas had the most serious consequences isboy of now four and a half years.a littleBertie's father was killed while workingduring an air-raid in the course of the autumnraids on London. His mother had had a com-124

plete breakdown and had been committed toamental hospital.Bertie isa slim, good-looking boy, very cleancut with a clear skin and delicate features.Heis extremely friendly, rather gay and, in themanner of children who have spent a long timein hospitals, he does not differentiate over-muchbetween the various grownup figures butgreets everybody with an impartial smile.While in bed he was always deep in play andwould keep himself busy with a few tiny toycars, a set of paper houses and similar playthings. He never mentioned his parents andseemed so unconcerned about everything thatwe doubted whether any knowledge of thefamily tragedy had ever reached him.After a while we had the opportunity ofquestioning a cousin of his mother's who visitedhim. We learned that Bertie did not only knowof his father's death but had actually shared allhis mother's grief and anxiety. His parents hadbeen devoted to each other; his mother hadnever let Bertie out of her sight.One day during the period of the big raidsthe father had not returned from work for hismidday meal and after waiting for him forhours the mother had started the usual search.She took Bertie along wherever she went, to allthe people she questioned, to the police andeven in the end, to the morgue. Here he was125

denied admission but he waited outside whilehis mother found and identified his father'sbody. He was taken to the funeral and to theearly visits to his father's grave. After that hefell ill with tonsillitis and was taken to the hospitalwhere he came down with scarlet fever.For his mother the separation from the childrenewed the shock which she had receivedfrom the father's death. She believed Bertiedead also and began to search for him inthe same frantic manner. Her psychotic attackwith hallucinations followed soon after. Themother's cousin repeatedly said how goodBertie had been to his mother and how he hadtried to comfort her in every way.Since we knew the story we tried carefullyto lead back Bertie's mind to his past experiences.He would now admit that his motherwas in the hospital.Certain things reappeared which he hadprobably been told during his hospital time:He should always eat his midday meal like hisfather, then he would soon be a big boy andwould be taken to visit his mother.Whenever anybody asked what he wanted tobe, he would say automatically and quickly:"Big boy". When questioned about his fatherhe said: "He is a workman who tidies awaythe bricks from the houses which Hitler threwdown".126

When theunexploded bomb was lying nearthe house, Bertie's mind was filled with ideasof soldiers, Hitler and bombing. He wouldbomb his paper houses by the hour, throwthem down and carefully put them up again.When taken to the window, he would vaguelypoint in some direction and say: "Look whatHitlerhas done".One morning he suddenly woke in a stateof great excitement. He first talked to himselfloudly for awhile, then called a young nurse tohis bed and told her to listen to him. From thenon during the day he repeated his story towhomsoever wanted to hear it. He told howhis father and other men had been at workwhen the bombs started to fall. They had allcrowded into the underground station whichwas enormously strong, so strong that no bombscould hit them. Then a "puff puff train" hadcome and taken them all in and taken them toa place in the country where workmen wereneeded. They were still working there. Whenthe war was over his father would get anotherand come back."puff puff train"Another version of the story said: In themorning his father had taken his hat and stickand his mackintosh, because it was raining.When he did not come back, he Bertie, hadalso taken his hat and his overcoat,put on hisshoes, had gone out and had brought him home.127

In addition to the story, he said his motherwas not in the hospital any more. She was allwell and living in the country and after thewar was over, she would also get into a trainand come back.Bertie had evidently found a happy solutionfor the insoluble problem of his parents' fate.It is possible that all this talking representedthe contents of a dream which he had had atnight. But it is also possible that this story hadslowly prepared itself in him in the foregoingweeks and that he had shifted and reshifted allthe facts and, with the help of wish phantasies,had altered the events to his own satisfaction.We realise that the fact of his father's deathis denied from the beginning; his mother's illnesswhich he had accepted first as a fact hasalso been denied. The phantasy of himself asthe hero who finds his father and triumphantlyreturns him to the mother has originated probablyat the time of his mother's search when hetried his best to comfort her.Wherever an anxious situation arises, reassuranceis immediately given by stress on the oppositefact. He tightly clenches his hands in theeffort to show the strength and safety of theunderground station. The fullfillment of allwishes , i.e. the reunion of the family is promisedfor a vague future.Talk about these matters disappeared com-128

pJetely after two days. What remained was agreat pleasure in playing bombing, killing andwar in general, a game in which several otherboys joined with pleasure.When promised to be taken on a shoppingexpedition, he again awoke inthe morning ingreat excitement and declared to several people:"My daddy is by now ready to comeback".In his thoughts, or maybe again in a dreamhe had mixed up the event of the shoppingexpedition with the expected event of hisfather's return. In the street he showed greatfear of and interest in motor cars. He refusedto cross the street whenever one is anywhere insight.In the same way he showed a great fearof catching cold and falling ill.When on a stiflingday his cardigan was taken off, he immediatelyran for his overcoat so as not to "fallill and go to the hospital".In the shop he was very friendly with theshop assistant and told her: "I used to live inLondon before. But London is bombed topieces, all the houses have fallen down and allthe people are gone". London in his mind evidentlystands for his past with his parents.Lately he has had many visits from hismother's cousin who during a fortnight's holidayfrom work has taken him several times toher small flat.He there sees pieces of furniture129

1which used to belong to his parents. He returnsfrom these visits greatly agitated. He show's notthe leastoutward sign of mourning or longingfor his parents but he will sometimes d'uringplay suddenly jump up and rush aimlessly tothe far corners of the nursery in a curious rabbit-likemanner. Such spells of unaccountablebehaviour are usually of very short duration.He will stop them just as suddenly and continuewhatever occupation he was followingbefore.It seems certain that Bertie finds it difficultto distinguish between the manner of disappearanceof his father and his mother. Heprobably believes that his mother is dead as ishis father. This is indicated in his phantasy oftheir being in the country and ofitheir returningin the same manner after the war. It isinteresting to note, though, that even in hisphantasy his father and mother are not together;they are kept in different places.THE COUNTRY HOUSEAugust 194The children's excitement to see the countryhouse had reached its highest pitch. Innumerablequestions and remarks cropped up continually.Though no one had ever promised130

them cows or horses, these two animals seemedtobe inseparably bound up with their idea ofcountrylife.Charlie said whenever he felt angry:"I willhit all the cows and horses in the countryhouse".Pauline said: "I will jump on the cows".Pamela asked: "Are the cows ready now"?Whenever the children felt angry with somebodythey would say: "You cannot come toour country house".When the departure was at last announcedfor a definite day, Roger said triumphantly:"The war is over, peace has come and we aregoing to the country. But the war has lasted along time".His idea of evacuation did not quite coincidewith ours; his desire for the advent of peaceand his desire for the departure to the countryhouse had merged into one.On Saturday, 23 August, the children weretaken out in the American ambulance and twoother cars, accompanied by four adults, onedog and one canary. On arrival the childrenwere overjoyed to see their new home, acharming, friendly modern building with allthe necessary conveniences, an immenseground floor studio serving as the big nursery,two huge south rooms with bay windows forthe toddlers' bedroom and playroom, a covered131

porch leading down to terraced lawns .for perfectplaygrounds, outhouses, a vegetable andberry garden and a huge orchard with threelittle chicken houses. The absence of horsesand cows was not commented upon. The childrenfound their bedrooms faultlessly set upand ready to be slept in, the first meal set outon their small tables and the nursery preparedwith material for play and work.Beverly said with great satisfaction after avisit to the dormitories : "I am going to s 1 e e pupstairs tonight and not downstairs". Thismeant: I am going to sleep in a proper bedroomagain after eight months of shelter sleepingin a basement.Some outstanding examples of the shock ofseparation are the following:There was Mary, two years and eight monthsold, whose mother brought the child to thenursery so that she could take up munitionwork. Mary who is a gay and beautiful girl,well developed for her age, seemed at first delightedwith the new experience. But whenafter several hours she understood that thismeant separation from her mother she brokedown completely, cried incessantly and washard to quiet.Frequent visits from the mother only seemedto aggravate her state. She formed apparentlyviolent attachments with one teacher then with132

another but changed her attachments with surprisingquickness. She had to hold somebody'shand continually. Since this completely putone teacher out of commission for work withother children, a substitute was invented halfin earnest and half in play or joke. A skippingrope was tied around the waist of her lastfavourite and Mary held on to ither around.and followedThis unsatisfactory state of affairslasted for two weeks. After that time herclinging became less insistent. She allowedeven her favorite teacher to leave the room attimes and she began definitely to enjoy hermother's visits without bursting into tears atevery new parting. Now, six weeks after herarrival, she is definitely well and settled inthe house.There was David, two years and six monthsold, a boy of charming, delicate appearance whoin a state of fright would roll his eyes untilonly the whites were seen. His mother reportedthat he as well as his elder brother were frightenedand nervous and inclined to have tempertantrums. The elder brother had for this reasonbeen removed from several billets. He hasnow been admitted to the old house and sentto the country with our children. She herselfwas in a highly nervous state. David seemedquiet and comparatively happy in the first twodays. He was inseparable from a toy dog,133

Peter, whom he had brought from home.Peter slept with him, ate with him, was inhis arms even when he was bathed and dressedand David insisted that Peter should be takencare of as if he were another child in theNursery.When his mother visited him after twodays, David had his first temper tantrum, akind of hysterical attack, in which he alternatelyembraced his mother, clung to her, kissedher, scolded her and hit out at her. He insistentlydemanded that she should kiss Peteron the mouth and hug him as if he were herbaby. From then on for quite a while he reactedwith temper to every imaginary insultdone to Peter. He would cry whenever anotherchild would knock against the toy andwould throw himself on the floor with despairwhenever the dog inadvertently fell out ofhis arms. Peter is evidently a symbol for himselfand has to be treated as he himself wantsto be treated. His mother was to make up inaffection to the dog for the wrong she had doneto David by sending him away from home. InDavid's case the difficulties caused by separationfrom his mother are hard to disentanglefrom the neurotic troubles he had certainly alreadyshown in his life with her.An example of the opposite kind is Sheila,three years and four months old, who entered134

the Nursery with a very charming little brotherof two years. Sheila is a rather plain littlegirl who has suffered from eczema since herbabyhood. She has lost her father in an airraidand seems definitely unloved by her mother,who greatly prefers the littlegirl. Sheila who isbrother, to theused to look after her brotherand generally seems to have led the lifea miniature charwoman continued this existencein the Nursery. She would scrub the floor,wipe the tables, feed the little children and reportall matters of importance to the teachers. Inthe middle of all these activities she suddenlydiscovered the joy of being a loved child herself.She developed a tender affection for thenursery superintendent and, in the middle ofdoing something else would suddenly run toher, throw herself into her arms and hug her.She definitely lost very little through separationfrom her mother and everything shemeets in the Nursery is a gain for her.ofSeptember 1941CHILDREN IN THE COUNTRYSince the children we sent to the countryremained within their own groups and wereaccompanied by the staff who had looked afterthem for several months already, evacuation135

for them was no shock of any kind. It tookthem only a very few hours to feel acquaintedwith the rooms of the new house. They arrivedat lunch time and at tea, their second meal inthe new surroundings, no child had the slightestdifficulty in finding his place at the table.The toddlers were delighted to have "realbeds" again. No child seemed tomiss or questionthe absence of a shelter.A few weeks later, a fond memory of theshelter in Wedderburn Road seemed to wakeup in them. An empty bookcase in the nurserywas suddenly declared to be a doll's shelterwith all the individual dolls sleeping peacefullyin tiers above each other. The workerswere asked by the children to crochet netsto safeguard the dolls against falling out oftheir beds and in this way to make the resemblanceto former shelter life complete.It took the children less than one day togetaccustomed to outdoor life. They took possessionof the playgrounds immediately and alreadyon the day after arrival showed theirfamiliarity with the lawns by standing ontheir heads on them and by using the spacefor all sorts of acrobatic stunts.Little more than a week after their arrivalin the country the children were disturbed atnight by a solitary stick of bombs whichdropped several miles distant. Since the noise136

—of bombing makes itself heard in open countryeven more than in a city, all these Londonersgrownups and children alike—in spite of havinglived through the whole period of blitz,jumped out of their beds and had quite afright. Many of the very little children wereuntouched by the event. The elder childrenand the staff met in the hall and the corridorsand some of the children needed quite a lotof quieting. The children talked for quite awhile about the bombing before falling asleepagain. Some of them, like Pamela quickly regainedtheir good humour and were ready tojoke. One of them said that they should writeto Jimmy in London that he could come tothe country now, that there were bombs therealso and that he could do fire watching.One little girl said the next morning in reportingthe event: "But it was a kind German,he did not drop the bomb on our house".It is rather curious to think that this is theidea of kindness with which the children ofthis period will grow up.Modes ofBehaviourOne of last month's newcomers in the countryhouse, Bertram, three years and nine monthsold is at varying times distressed shy, cross,affectionate and violent. He had never beenseparated from his mother for the first two137

and a half years of his life and then was takenfrom her very suddenly when she had to .goto a hospital in the last stages of tuberculous illness.His father who knows that the mother'sdeath is expected shortly and who is himselfin the Merchant Navy brought Bertram andhis elder sister to the Hampstead Nurserywhen on leave.Bertram, at the beginning, spoke very littleand never made any references to his past.Instead of that he would get into short fitsof temper and defend himself against all sortsof harmless routine happenings with the utmostvigour but without any consistency in his behaviour.He would refuse for instance to beput to bed or to be washed or to have his throatinspected at one moment and then willinglyallow to have it done the next He would sitendlessly at table apparently finishing hislunch. The most difficult time for him was theevening when he was supposed to go to bed. Onsuch an occasion he had one of his outbursts ofanger against the nursery superintendent andassured her that he did not like her. She saidsimply that she was very sorry because she didlike him.He said: "I don't like you and I don't likenobody. I only like myself". Immediatelyafterwards he told her for the first time howhis mother had gone away in a big car and138

—had never come back again.The evening after this conversation he didnot make his usual fuss but called her to hisbed and said: "Stay with me. You are mymother now."He is now very closely attached to her, veryaffectionate and much easier to handle. .Hehas succeeded in expressing the most importantevent in his past life in words and consciousthought and this relieves him of the necessityof expressing his memory of it in abnormalbehaviour. Day after day he now adds newpieces of information about his past.Whenever he is at cross purposes with oneof the grown ups, he says threateningly: "Iwill put you to bed." Or "You will get nopudding".In this way he remembers and relates theeducational measures taken in the little schoolwhere he lived with his sister before they cameto us. This also explains why his behaviourwas always most cranky when either eating orwhen supposedly sleeping.The outlet into conscious thought and speechwith consequent relief in their behaviour isunluckily denied to some of our children whowould be most in need of it.We have quite a number of war orphansinour groups. Among them are two familiesfour children in one, two in the other—where139

the children have not been informed abouttheir fathers' death. Both men were killed inair raids, the body of one has not even beenrecovered.Though both mothers are competent womenwho immediately faced the task of going outto work to support their families, they are toomuch hit themselves to be able to face theirchildren knowing and possibly talking abouttheir fathers' death.They built up a legend ofthe father being "in the north of England",being "ill in hospital" and they force thechildren to believe in it. There is not theslightest doubt that all these six children—exceptof course the baby—must know allabouttheir fathers' death. They have seen theirmothers cry and have lived weeks or evenmonths in close contact with mourning beforethey came to us. The mothers even take themto church at the anniversary of their father'sdeath, to visit neighbours who condole withthem; they even had to accompany the motherto the officials to debate the question of pensions,guardianship and proving of death. Inspite of their emotional life being completelyunder the impression of their deprivation, theyare denied the relief given by by talking aboutthe matter.One of these children, five years old, theother day broke out in the presence of the140

mother into the triumphant statement. "I knowall about my father. He has been killed andhe will never come back".The mother answered with a fit of anger,closely questioning the child who had toldher"such a lie".The child only repeated: "You have toldme yourself through your behaviour". But inthe end the mother won.She made the child repeat: "The father isin Scotland and will certainly return".The little girl repeated the words after herwith a sullen expression and had to promisenever to say or think it otherwise. The childrenof this family show the effects of thisdiscrepancybetween the truth they know and feel andthe legend they are forced to adopt in wild andunruly behaviour and general contempt for thegrown up world.The other little girl, Sheila, the little charwomenof three and a half years, reacts toevery outing with her mother, especially whenit takes her back to the father's world witha new excess of washing, scrubbing and lookingafter the other children, far beyond heryears.There is no doubt that all these children canbe helped by an open discussion of their misfortune.But at the moment it cannot be doneagainst the mothers' wishes and it will takeHi

some patient and careful work tomothers to adopt this point of view.influence theOctober—November 1941PARENT UNDERSTANDINGFrom rash and inconsiderate actions of somemothers, it would be very wrong to generaliseand suppose that these untaught mothers haven'tunderstanding of their children's needs or arenot appreciative also of the more subtle andcomplicated methods of dealing with theirchildren. We find that the mother's own diagnosisof the child's state isvery often correct.Iris's mother for instance suggested from thebeginning that the child's attacks of nervouscoughing might have something to do with herfather's incessant coughing in the year beforehis death. David's mother always knew thathis bed wetting and general state of restlessnesswere due toher own attacks of anxiety duringair raids. Patrick's mother who showed greatconcern and understanding about his normalstate whenever he was separated from her, askedus later to take her elder girl who had developedan overly timid and frightened mannerin her billet, where she was excellently wellcared for in all material ways. She said itcould not be good for a child to lose all con-142

fidence in her own actions in that way. Shehad noticed that whatever the girl did, shewould stop afterwards and wonder whether shehad done right.Several mothers, who were rather doubtfulof our methods in the beginning, admitted aftera while that our ways of handling the childrenseemed more successful than theirs.Little David's mother began to see the partshe used to play in his temper tantrums andsaid : "It is lovely now to put him to bed withoutexcitements".Mary's mother on the other hand still insiststhat her spankings are more sensible thanour indulgence when Mary is upset.All mothers relate how much they mindwhen they see their children continuallyrestricted in their activities in billets or in institutions.They are upset over the fact that insome places children are not allowed to handlefreely the presents which the parents bring tothem.Bertram's and Rosemary's father, for instance,reported as one of the instances whichcompletely turned him against their formerNursery, that a doll which he had given to hislittle daughter on one visit was still in thesame perfect condition when he returned fora next visit after several months at sea. This,he said, could only mean that the toy had been143

withheld from the child and that the peoplein charge did not understand what a toy ofthis kind could mean in comforting a childseparated from both parents. The child'smother is in the hospital with Tb.Insight of this kind, in the beginning cameas a surprise to us. We had rather expected theparents to wish that their presents would berespected and preserved.Understanding of this type is shown withspecial clearness in a letter received last weekfrom John's mother. John, three years old, wasadmitted in September to the country house.As a bed-wetter he had been handed on fromone billet to another—five or six changes inall—and no further place could be found forhim. He is a delicate little boy of graceful,charming appearance, friendly but non-committal,rather frightened, and lost and withoutemotional contact with anybody.All we couldlearn about him was that his father was aprivate in the army and that his mother was ina sanitarium with Tb. When an aunt fromLondon visited him after a short time, we ask-She onlyed for particulars of his past history.told us that she was the mother's sister, thatshe belonged to a family of 13 and that sheknew almost nothing about the child. But shewould write and ask the mother to let usknow as much as possible of the experiences144

the child had had all by himself during themother's illness.We quote the following from the mother'sletter:"... John hasn't had any complaints, only measleswhich he had last December, they lasted aweek, but nothing else whatever, he has alwayseaten well and slept well, when John was 8months old his daddy was called up for the Army,up tillhe was two years of age there was just Johnand I on our own so of course he had his freedom,was allowed to play in the garden, etc and was ahappy, carefree little boy, but last year we decidedto go to Yorkshire to his daddy for a while, I wasonly there quite a short time when I had an haemorraghe,of course it came quite a shock to me whenI learned what was wrong as I had felt so well,I never had the slightest suspicion of it or I shouldnot have gone all those miles from home to leave mybaby at the mercy of strangers, however, I went intothe Sanatorium in December 1940 and the womanwho we were staying with said she would take careof John during the time she had him his daddy usedto go to see him and he said it got on his nervesto hear her keep saying to the child, "Don't dothis and don't do that" and as time wore on henoticedJohn was being cowled down and when hisdaddy took him sweets he would give them to thislady and sit there and wait for her to give him one,he was never allowed to play out in the garden andwhen his father went on Sunday mornings to takehim out she always made the excuse that he was notbathed, and then on evenings she would put himto bed just before his dad arrived, this went on for 6145

months thi9 was the period I was in the Sanatorium.I was up all day and had been for quite a whileand I was feeling very well so I decided to comeback to London and let some one in m yown familytake care of John, and I would finish my treatmentin a Sanatorium down here, but I was disappointedwhen I got home I found my sisters hadall got government jobs and could not leave them, soI said unless I found somebody suitable I wouldnever leave him again and it was during this time Ihad him that I noticed he was not the happycarefree little boy that I had left, he had alteredcompletely, seemed to be frightened of every littlething he did, he would say "Can I do this, can Ido that", he would never do anything of his ownfree will for fear it was wrong, I would say "yes"to everything he wanted just to get him backto his old ways, and it made me realise how verymuch he must have been kept down ... I thengot the chance to come to this Sanatorium andas we know some one in the country we thoughtit would be a good idea to ask her if she wouldlike to have John, thinking he would have a goodhome and the freedom of the fields to play in, sheseemed to jump at the idea of having him and sheasked me to pay her 15/— a week, but I was sopleased to think that she was going to have him thatI asked her to accept 18— as the cost of living wasso dear and would not be much money in for herlabour, this she accepted, so I came away to settledown and get better, thinking that little John wasnow settled and I would not have the same worryas Ihad before of him being tied down and watchedabout, but she was very particular, in the home, andI guessed that she turned out to be the same as the146

other one, however, she wrote me a letter after amonth and told me what a good little soul John wasand what clean ways he had, but at the same timereferring to not wanting him any longer. I nevertook no notice and a fortnight after I got a letterfrom her saying she had turned him over to a nurserywith the feeble excuse that he wetted the bed, butnow when I sit and think of the different places hehas been to and the way he has been treated, Mrs.B . . . has done me a good turn in the long run bygetting John into your nursery, now he can playwith other children and do just as he pleases withoutsomebody continually saying "Don't do thisandthat", so I hope he will soon get back to his jollycarefree ways as I am sure he will do by this descriptionmy sister gave me of the nursery. WellMatron, I hope I have not bored you stiff with thislong letter, but I have described to you as bestI can as to where John has been since my illness ..."TrainingSchemeWe have at the moment about twenty younggirls of the age between sixteen and twenty-oneyears working for us in our houses. Apartfrom the very youngest they have all had sometraining as nurses, baby nurses, or nursery schoolteachers, partly on the continent and partly inEngland. To give a sounder foundation ofsome common knowledge to our work with thechildren, we have now decided to start out ona purely private and unofficial training scheme147

of our own. This training scheme is strictlylimited in several directions:A Wc can give no certificate at the end apart from aprivate letter of recommendation in cases where theyoung worker has been found satisfactory.B We spend no money on our training scheme justas we demand no fees for our children.CDWe are not able to teach everything that the curriculumof a children's nurse or nursery school teachershould include. We simply utilise whateverknowledge and experience we find among the eldermembers of the staff to teach the younger ones.Our task is very much facilitated by the fact thatnearly all our heads of departments have in theirformer professional life taught either at a University,a training college or at welfare institutions.The hours used for theoretical instruction were formerlyrest hours for the staff which the girls wereglad to give up for the purpose of learning. Thepractical instructions form part of the regular workingday. Each girlis supposed to spend a fixed time(at least 3 months) in each department (babies,junior toddlers, nursery, sickroom. -Milk kitchen,shelter duty, kitchen and household come in forslightly shorter periods of duty.—The whole trainingis supposed to last for the duration of the war.148

The following is the time table of this trainingscheme which already has begun to functionduring November.LECTURE COURSESTHE BODY OF THE CHILDA course of 30 lectures, to be held on Mondays, 2.15-3.15 P.M.A AnatomyBCDEFirst AidNutritionHygieneChildren's diseasesMENTAL DEVELOPMENTA course of 16 lectures to be held on Wednesdays,2.15-3.15 P.M.A Development of the sensesB Intellectual developmentC First toysD An idea of testingDEVELOPMENT OF EMOTION AND IN-STINCTA An introductory courseB Reading seminarGENERAL MANAGEMENTA course of 4 lectures to be given on Fridays, 2.15-3.15 P.M.A BudgetB FinanceC The building up on an institution149

COOKINGSEWINGTwo courses of two-hour periods to alternate onFridays after Course 4 at 2 P.M.A DietB Practical Cooking (at Wedderburn Road)C Practical SewingGYMNASTICSPractical demonstrations for the trainees of the respectivedepartments.A Baby gymnastics. Mondays and Thursdays,4.30-5 P.M.B Gymnastics with the Senior Toddlers, Tuesdaysand Saturdays 11 A.M.CGymnastics with the Junior Toddlers, Thursdays11 A.M.December 1941REUNION AFTER SEPARATIONThe Christmas holidays created special opportunitiesto observe certain facts about theparent-child relationship. Apart from shortSundays and occasional hours during the weekthere is very little chance for the parents ofthe Babies' Home to feel that the childrenreally are still their own. Many of them hadtherefore planned a long time beforehand totake their children "home" at least for onewhole day, some of them for several days at150

Christmas.In many cases these hopes were disappointedthrough the illness of the children,in others the re-union was not as happy as theparents had expected.Baby James's parents, for instance, had begunplanning three months ago to take him hometo their room for Christmas day. The father'sarmy leave and the mother's free day from factorywork coincided, which was a rare occasion.They had prepared for him a temporary criband in all ways had set the stage for one wholeday of family life. When they came to fetchhim, they had to be told that he had run a hightemperature the day before and though thefever was down now, it would be highly dangerousto take him out of his surroundings, tointerrupt his routine and to subject him toa day's festivities. The father got very angryabout it, insisted that no baby could be harmedby being taken home in a pram and thatafter all a cold was just a cold. The motherjust stood by the crib and cried with disappointment.But when the father,a very young boy soldier,finally stormed out of the house to geta drink, she settled down quite happily andsaid: "Men never understand such things,"and spent the whole day in the nursery sittingwith her baby.The toddlers on the other hand went on ex-151

tensive Christmas leave. Brenda, seventeenmonths old, was carried home in triumph ina new pink coat and leggings to her Irishmother and Indian father, both munition workersin the East end. Though she is the brightestchild and has the sunniest disposition in thenursery she did not behave very graciously athome. She would not eat and this disturbed themother who had often seen her eat enormousquantities at our place. She even took her tothe doctor of the nearest Welfare Clinic to findout what was the matter.But the doctor said with great insight:"Nothing is the matter. She is only frettingfor her nurses and the other children."The mother, who is a specially kind heartedand good natured woman said when she broughther back: "I understand Brenda. It is sodull for her at home. There is nothing shecan do."Other mothers reacted to the same experiencewith less friendliness. When Brian,twenty-three months old, went home he justlay down on the floor quietly, was not interestedand would not play with anything. Hismother was greatly worried but when shebrought him back to the nursery he rushedaround and was as lively as ever.She looked at him and said: "He justcheated us."152

Michael, two years and one month old, whois the greatest eater in the toddler's room wouldnot take any food at home.Norman's mother reported that she had toget up at four A.M. to make toast for him becausehe said continuously and monotonously:"I want my toast, I want my toast, I want mytoast".Kenneth, three years old, was quite contentwith his mother for one day. He got restlessthe next morning, seemed more and more disturbedin the course of the day and then towardsevening said very decidedly: "And nowI want to go home again to my Nelsa (Use, thenursery superintendent)and my nice bath".It is naturally a bitter experience for themothers, that after half ayear's absence, thesesmall children shift their affections and theirloyalties, call the nursery their home and behaveas strangers or as guests with their ownparents.We try to help this situation to the best ofour ability by putting no restrictions on thevisits of the parents. Still,nothing can alter thefact that children of this age can only feel fullyat home in one place and will turn their affectionto the people who handle them day by day.It iseasier for the mother to maintain her relationshipto the child unbroken than it is forthe child to do the same. But just because the153

mother's relationship remains more or less unalteredand what is half a lifetime tothe baby is only half a year toher, the mothers cannot experience this situationwithout bitterness. They naturally thinkthat it is the material comforts which the nurseryhas to offer, the choice of toys, the goodfood, the "nice bath", which has stolen theaffection of the children from them.itIn reality,is the extreme material and emotional dependencyof the small child which forces it toform such strong ties with his immediate surroundings.For this very reason we may expectmany difficult situations to arise at the end ofthe war when alltoreturn home again.these children are supposedThe state of affairs with the bigger childrenin the Country House is quite different. Nowthat the quarantine has made the visitsof parentsimpossible we have the opportunity of seeingthe children under conditions which moreclosely resemble those of other children inevacuation. There are still some differences ofcourse. It is astonishing that even the smallerchildren understand the reason why the parentshave stopped coming. We encourage lettersfrom both sides, small parcels are sent and newsis taken back and forth when the doctor makesher regular visits. We find that in this distancethe relationship to the absent parents is154greatly

idealised. Their letters are carried around andhave to be read to the children innumerabletimes. Children who do not receive letters oftenget sulky and depressed.It is interesting to note that the affection forthe parents is transferred in many cases to materialobjects which have come as presents fromthe parents.Hetty, two years and ten months old, had receiveda green knitted dress from her motherand went on wearing it with the greatest delight.When the dress was dirty and supposedto go to the laundry, she was upset and distressedand refused to be comforted.In the same manner, a little toddler in NetherhallGardens had to go to bed in high blackshoes which his mother had brought him thatday as a present.Toys enjoy an entirely different valuation accordingto whether they are given by the nurseryor by the parents. Rosemary, five years old,possesses a collection of tiny toys from hermother which she carries around, shows toeverybody and calls "my very own".Dolls given by a parent are respected byeverybody as private property; dolls given bythe nursery even to individual children are freelyshared with everybody. Only sweets, evenwhen sent by the parents, are shared out immediatelyas a matter of pride and principle.155

Ronny, seven years old, who takes very littlecare of her clothes otherwise,looks at a littleskirt made for her by her mother and says: "Iwon't wear it to school. Only for best."This transference of affection from the parentsto their presents can sometimes go quitebeyond the limits of normal reactions. Bertie,four years old, for instance who has never overcomethe shock of separation from his mother,a bad case of hospitalized Tb. and from hisfather who is a sailor on the ocean, has developeda craze for parcels, since parcels are theone connecting link between him and his absentmother. He does not care about the contents;he just demands that all his old toys be wrappedup as parcels and given to him to open. As soonas he has opened them he wants them wrappedup again. His continual and never satisfied wishto return to his mother cannot express itself inwords. It has disappeared from consciousnessand instead expresses itself in this compulsivewish to open parcels.January—March 1942ARTIFICIAL FAMILIESWe have recently adopted a new arrangementof work with our nursery children inNetherhall Gardens which influences their life156

in a decisive way. Since these children receivefrequent visits from their own mothers, we hadexpected that they would not be searching forreal mother substitutes and could be satisfiedwith more impersonal and diffuse attachmentsto the various nursery workers dealing withtheir group. We had not assigned special childrento special workers nor divided the groupfor other purposes than the practical ones ofplay, graded according to age. All the childrenknew all the workers in their group and werehandled by them indiscriminately for the purposesof bathing, dressing, going for walks etc.There were two factors which decided us tochange this arrangement. The one was that certainchildren suddenly showed strong preferencefor certain workers, followed them about,did not want to be separated from them anddemanded attention of a very personal nature.Since the workers felt that no favoritismshould be shown, this led to all sorts of disappointmentsand denials for the children. Thesecond factor was that certain steps in developmentwere slow in coming; that in spite of allopportunities provided, certain children werereluctant to grow out of their baby habits andothers took too long in overcoming reverses intheir development due to separation from home.We attributed these difficulties to the lack ofastable mother-relationship.157

The step taken was the subdivision of thelarge nursery group into six small "familygroups", of about four children. In assigningthe children to their new substitute mothers,we followed the signs of preference shown onthe one hand by the children, and on the otherhand by the young workers. Each "mother"now has more or less complete charge of herfamily. She alone bathes and dresses her group,isresponsible for their clothes and offers themprotection against all the current mishaps ofnursery life. There is no necessity any longertorefuse a child special attention of a motherlykind.The result of thisarrangement was astonishingin its force and immediacy. The need forindividual attachment for the feelings whichhad been lying dormant, came out in a rush.In the course of one week allsix families werecompletely and firmly established. But the reactionsin the beginning were far from beingexclusively happy ones. Since all these childrenhad already undergone a painful separationfrom their own mother, their mother-relationshipis naturally burdened with the effects ofthis experience. To have a mother means, tothem equally, the possibility of losing a mother;the lovefor the mother being thus closely accompaniedby the hate and resentment producedby her supposed desertion. Consequently,158

the violent attachment to the mother substitutesof their own choice was anything but peacefulfor the children. They clung to them full ofpossessiveness and anxiety when they were present,anxiously watched every one of their movementstowards the door of the nursery andwould burst into tears whenever they were leftby them for a few minutes.Jealousy developed alongside with themother-attachment. There were two types ofjealousy to be seen; one directed against thechildren of the same family group who actuallyshared the attention of themother substitute;or when the children succeeded in acceptingthese brothers and sisters who were forcedon them, they directed the full impact of theirjealousy against the children outside their familygroup and would not allow their worker tohave any dealings with them. For a while wereally thought that our grand innovation hadbeen a great mistake. The formerly peacefulnursery reverberated with the weeping of childrenwhose "mother" had left the room, forinstance toget something from the next room,and whose absence was mourned as if shewould never return. Fights among the childrenmultiplied in frequency and intensity.Luckily, this state of affairs did not last longerthan two to three weeks. With the realisationthat their new mother substitute really belonged159

to them, reappeared as often as she disappearedand had no intention to desert them altogether,the state of frenzy subsided and gave way to aquieter, more stable and comforting attachment.At the same time, the children beganto develop in leaps and bounds. The most gratifyingeffect was that several children who hadseemed hopeless as far as the training for cleanlinesswas concerned, suddenly started to usethe pot regularly and effectively.Bathing times in the evening have now becometimes of special intimacy when each childis certain of the full and undivided attention ofits favourite adult. This again, has had a remarkableeffect on the development of speech.All the children in the group have greatly enlargedtheir vocabulary. And several childrenwho were rather backward in their speech developmentdue to nursery life, have now, underthe influence of thisthesearrears.new stimulus made up forThere is every hope at the moment that thespeech of all the children will reach the levelof development which it would have attainedunder the conditions of home and family life.Real families, as for instance the three Fitzgibbonand the two Miles children, were ofcourse left together in our family groups.There is the possibility that these newlyformed attachments might have consequences160

for the relationship of the children to theirvisiting real mothers. Curiously enough no signsof such changes have so far appeared on thesurface.The occurrences in this group are at the sametime a clear demonstration of the known factthat children transfer their early relationship totheir families onto all the people who laterplay an important part in their lives. Thistransference of feeling is responsible, on the onehand for the stormy and conflicting nature ofthe attachment of the child to the nurseryworker, for the mixture of love and hate, possessivenessand jealousy. It explains, on theother hand, why the consequences of such attachmentsare so far reaching where educationand development is concerned. With the fullreturn to the type of attachment which hadbeen interrupted by the separation from thefamily, the child resumes his steady progresstowards the formation of a normal personality.He overcomes his childish habits and there unfoldsthe functions which belong to that particularstage of his individual development.161

April—July 1942CONFLICTING ATTITUDESOur attempts to start "artificial families" inour nursery, i.e.to assign three or four childrenonly to one young worker as their special"mother" interested some of our readers andled to further discussion of the subject. Thisagain was a welcome opportunity to reviewonce more our observations about the attitudeof the real mother towards the child which isseparated from her and the reactions of thechild to the expressed or unexpressed emotionsof the mother.In trying to trace the numerous failures ofthe billeting system to their sources, a greatdeal of attention has been paid to the attitudeof the foster mothers, and to the difficulties ofthe children which often seemed to make thetask of foster mothers an impossible one. Lesshas been said about the inner attitude of themothers themselves. But it remains a fact thatchildren are taken out of billets and nurseriesand brought back to danger areas even wherebillets and nurseries are satisfactory and whenthe children themselves are perfectly easy tohandle. They are taken home in a great numberof cases because the mother cannot copewith the conflict within her own feelings.162Her

conscious wishes for the safety of the child contrastwith other, only dimly perceived or whollyunconscious feelings, which lie at the basis ofthe mother-child relationship.Ambivalent Attitude of Motherstowards Separation fromtheir young ChildrenWe generally over-estimate the strength ofthe mother's sensible wish to have the child removedfrom danger. Even in the middle of airraids a mother may show a double reaction inthis respect. She wishes to have her child wellout of danger, but at the same time tokeep itnear her, where she can personally care for it,watch over it and can know just where it is atthe moment. She feels no one could protect herchild as she can and therefore feels reassuredby its presence. Reason and emotion definitelywork against each other at these times. Thismay explain some of the continuous "to andfro" of evacuation. While one wish of themother is active in sending the child to thecountry, another,, purely emotional one, is theagent to bring it back again to her side.Expression of the same Ambivalenceon Visiting the ChildWhen the mother visits the child she willcome with her emotions of longing, augmented163

y the doubt and worry whether she has donethe right thing for the child. It would gratifyher in one way to find that the child is worseoff away from her than with her and thereforeshe will be very ready to find fault and willexamine the child for signs of neglect and illtreatmentand will observe the nurses or fostermother with critical eyes. On the other handshe, of course, wants to find her child well andcontent. A sensitive child, besides having itsown emotional reactions will feel this tensenessand conflict in the mother. It will be aware ofher critical attitude and feel torn between itsallegiance to her and the incipient liking forhis new surroundings.These emotions which exist as undercurrentsduring the whole length of the visitthencreate violent disturbances when the time forleave-taking arrives. This is generally a mostpainful experience for the mother as well asfor the child. The child will cling to themother, scream and show its misery in a noisymanner. The mother would certainly not wanther child to let her leave gladly but she cannotstand these upsetting scenes. She reacts tothem, by trying, on her next visit either tofoolthe child by pretending that she is not leavingwhen she really intends to do so or by sayinggoodbye to the child over and over again. Aftera mother has experienced such scenes repeated-164

ly she will acquire a new conflict: she feels thather visits only add to the unhappiness of thechild and she is now torn between the desire tostay away so as to spare the child further unhappinessand the desire to reassure herself bycoming to visit the child again as soon aspossible.The situation is, naturally, even worse for themother if the child reacts to her coming andgoing with apparent indifference. She is unableto understand such unfaithfulness, she will behurt, jealous, unhappy and probably willlengthen the intervals between her visits. Shesuspects the people who take care of the childof "turning it against her". Mothers in this statewill at one moment be cross, at the next overaffectionatewith their children. If not helpedover this difficult moment, the most likely wayout for them will be to take the child homeagain.In the Hampstead Nursery we avoid theworst of these complications by keeping openhouse for the mothers. They are reassured bythe feeling that they have easy access tochildren, that their visitstheirare no disturbance tothe routine of the household, that they can taketheir children out for walks and home fornights whenever they are free. Nothing whichgoes on in the nursery is hidden from theireyes so that their worst suspicions are allayed.165

But even with the best intentions these conditionscannot be always kept up. We wentthrough a difficult time when the country housewas in quarantine for scarlet fever and had tobe closed to visitors for three months. Motherswho, under ordinary visiting conditions, feltvery placid about their children's stay with us,would suddenly call up by telephone in anexcited manner, complain that they had not receivedan answer to some imaginary letter oftheirs which had never reached us, that they"worried day and night" about their child, thatthey "did not even hear whether the child wasalive or dead", etc.Several mothers took theirchildren home on visits after the lifting of thequarantine to make up for lost contact. Butthese visits did not prove too satisfactory. Somemothers complained that the children did notseem the same to them, one of our stoutest girlswas considered too thin by the mother.Little Sandra, three years old, refused to lookat her father whenever he tried to approachher, whereupon he telephoned us in an excitedmanner and declared: "I do not like the goingsonin that country house".But fortunately Sandra cried at the parents'next visit when the moment of parting arrived.That, completely helped the situation andrestored her father's confidence in us.A great many of these reactions of166the par-

ents is fully conscious. The mothers speciallyare well aware of their double feelings. Theywould like to have their children stay with usin safety and under favourable conditions andyet they would also like to have them homeagain. They are also aware that it is the changedbehaviour of the child which upsets themand strengthens the wish to have it returnhome. What they do not realise, however, isthat the criticisms on which they pretend tobase their decisions are unreal or displaced,and that the child's reactions are often increasedby the conflict in the mother's mind.In the long run even these irrational factorsin the parents are open to influence. The pridein the development of the child, its concretegains in health and knowledge, the loss of badhabits are very real factors in deciding the outcomeof the conflict.Undisturbed Positive Reactionsof Mothers to their Babies,even after SeparationIn Netherhall Gardens, there isgood opportunitytoobserve the various attitudes of visitingmothers to their small babies. Here themothers know when they leave their babies thateven with frequent visits they cannot expectrecognition from them before they are a fewmonths old. Some mothers visit daily, some167

weekly and only a few less often. There arecertain very natural, very possessive motherswho behave in much the same way on theirvisits. They enter the room and make straightfor the cot where their baby is lying. They immediatelypick it up and handle it in the mostconfident manner.One mother of twins for instance placed thechildren with us when they were four monthsold. They have now been with us for a periodof nine months and during that time she hasnever failed to visit them daily in her off hoursfrom work. At times our nurses were shockedat her apparent rough treatment of them.They worried, as time went on, why she didnot learn something from their much quieterhandling of babies. This mother seizes onetwin after the other out of her cot, hugs it,holds it firmly in her hands and squeezes it.Both children react to this rough handlingwith evident pleasure. Now that they are oldershe even slaps them to the horror of the nurses.But the twins show more contact with the visiingmother than with the nurses who are constantlywith them. This is shown very clearlyat their feeding time. Whenever a nurse feedsone of the twins, the other waits more or lesspatiently in its bed. But when the mother isfeeding, the twin who is kept waiting screamsand makes impatient noises all the time to call168

the mother's attention. There is no doubt aboutits jealousy. The rough treatment given by themother is rightly interpreted by the childrenas an expression of her possessive love.A similar situation can be observed in anotherbaby who entered the nursery at the ageof six and a half months.He had been in unsatisfactorybillets for four months, was takenhome by the mother and came to us after threeweeks of home life. The mother is a huge woman,extremely pleasant, a most motherly typewith an immense lap. The baby felt illafter itsarrival and the mother could not visit for theentire first week because her husband at homehad fallen ill as well. When she came at lastand found him with a bad cold she was worried,she picked him up, cuddled him, croonedover him, rocked him, rather jerked him backand forth, held him very close and finallysoothed him to sleep. She put all the emotionswhich she had withheld from him during thisweek of separation into this short space oftime. There is no doubt about it that some ofher feelings imparted themselves to him. Whenshe came a fortnight later he seemed very shywith her, felt strange and did not recognise heruntil she held him again tight in her arms andcrooned and rocked him as she had done before.He then cuddled down and was a realpicture of contentment169

The same feelings can also be expressed in acompletely different manner. We have a FreeFrench baby, who entered the nursery at theage of ten weeks. Her parents visit regularlyonce a week and nearly always together. Theyleanover the child's cot, handle her delicatelyand adoringly, somehow afraid to touch herexcept in the most gentle manner. Now, thatthe baby is ten months old, her mother has acertain way of sitting on a chair with the babyon her lap facing the father who often feedsher in that position. Also this worshipping attitudeof the parents surely makes some lastingimpression on the child.Anyway this possessive handling as well asthe adoring one certainly goes far in outweighingthe comparatively unemotional, even andgentle treatment which the children receivefrom the nurses who take care of them.Ambivalence towards BabiesAll baby-mothers mentioned so far are verymotherly types,possessive, affectionate, sure ofthemselves and in no way torn by conflictingemotions in regard to their babies. But thereare other mothers who, in contrast to them showthe well known signs of double feelings towardstheir children.A good example of this type is Sandy's motherwho brought the baby to us when she was170

twelve days old. At first she visited regularlyevery week, then she began to come less often.When the child was four months she did not appearfor several weeks and when she cameagain she failed to recognise her baby. Sandrahad lost a lot of her black hair in the meantime.She would only believe that the child wasreally hers after inspecting all the other childrenin their cots. After this visit she again stayedaway for several weeks. When she visited nextshe went straight to the cot, probably in order toprove to herself and to us that she knew herbaby. She picked Sandra up, hugged and kissedher but Sandra did not like it and shrieked withterror. It took hours to quiet her again. Whilethe nurse was holding her and trying to calmher, the mother paced up and down the roomlooking tense and worried. Every time she approached,the baby started shrieking again. Itwas quite evident to us that the child reacted tothe mother's violent emotion. The next timethe mother came,after barely a week, she approachedSandra's cot very quietly; she did nottry to kiss her or to pick her up but played withher as she lay there and Sandra seemed quitecontented.The mother's feelings on those visitsare notdifficult to discern. Sandra is an unwanted andillegitimate baby, the mother's interest in her isuncertain and unreliable in the highest degree.171

Her unconscious wish against the baby betraysitself in the failure to recognise the child. Thechild felt this negative emotion and reacted withterror. On the other hand there is also consciouslove and affection which impel themother to visit her and determine her reactionsto a certain degree.Purely Negative Reactions towardsthe BabyThe situation is much less involved wherethe mother only has the straight and undisturbedwish to get rid of her child. An exampleof this was Johnny whose mother deliveredhim to us at the age of three weeks. Wehad no vacancy at the time but accepted himsince it was evident that the mother wouldotherwise leave him on the next doorstep. Sheweaned him immediately and left the same dayagainst all urging to stay at least a few days.She visited a few times and then stopped. Thenext news came from an Adoption Society withwhom the mother had made arrangements alreadybefore his birth. In this case it seemedquite impossible todetect any conscious or unconsciousleanings in the mother towards thechild.172

SummaryObservations of this kind may be usefulin explaining some of the puzzling behaviourof mothers during the evacuation of their children.With the recognition of unconsciouswishes and their conflict with conscious attitudes''puzzling behaviour" usually can be explainedas an unsuccessful attempt to combinean expression of both sides in one action or tosatisfy the two attitudes, one after the other, intwo sets of actions.Under the conditions of normal and legitimatefamily life the only feelings towards thechild of which the mother is conscious arepositive feelings of pride of possession, loveand affection. It is true that every motheralso has emotions of another nature. The babyisalso a burden to her, sometimes a disturbancein the relationship to the father, sometimes feltas a threat to her own body, sometimes a disturbancein enjoying herself etc. But underfavorable conditions feelings of this kind areusually barred from consciousness. Whereverthey appear on the surface as impatience or exasperationwith the child, outside reasons arefound to explain their existence. In this waywe get an interplay in the mother between consciouspositive feeling and repressed negativefeelings towards the child. The unconsciousfeelings may remain dormant under the con-173

ditions of normal family life. When motherand child are forcibly separated, as for instancefor the purpose of evacuation, the mother maysuddenly feel the separation as a fulfillmentof her unconscious desire to get rid of herchild.In that case she will be unable to standthe situation. She will disregard all reasonsagainst it,will use the slightest pretexts to explainher decision to herself and will enforcere-union with the child so as to be re-assuredabout her own love for it.Under unfavorable social and economicconditions and with unwanted illegitimate childrenthe emotional situation of the mother iscompletely reversed. Her entire consciousmind is filled with the desire not to have thebaby before it is born or to get rid of thechild after its appearance. Instinctive motherlyfeelings towards the child cannot fail to bepresent as well, but they are felt as a threatto the mother's own existence and thereforebanned from consciousness. Here the consciouswish of the mother and the necessities of evacuationcoincide.Mothers of thiskind present no difficulty inthe beginning of evacuation. Their attitudeonly becomes a danger when they fail to visit.completely lose touch with the nursery or billetwhere their children have been placed and willcertainly be untraceable when their children174

are supposed to return home at the end of thewar.But also with mothers of this type the unconsciousattitude, in their case the positiveone, has to be reckoned with and can bebrought into play by change of circumstances.When the mother's hostility has been expressedin the initial separation from the child, whenfurther, the economic threat which the childmeans to her has been removed through theoutside help represented by the billet ornursery, the motherly feelings can in their turnrise to consciousness. Since under the new conditionsthey meet no condemnation from theconscious personality of the mother, it is sometimespossible against all expectations to establishgood relations between these mothers andtheir children just under the conditions ofnursery life.August—December 1942CHILDREN'S REACTIONS TO WARThere were only two daylight alarms andone night alarm in London during the lastmonth. Neither the day nor the night routinewere much disturbed by them. In obedience tothe warnings issued by the government we keep175

up all precautions, which means that all childrencontinue to sleep in the shelter dormitorywith exception of those who are kept upstairsbecause of whooping cough.The Country House had one night full of excitement.A German aeroplane dropped bombsin the neighborhood and was chased by Britishfighters. There were flares and guns andeverybody listened to the fight. All theyounger children slept through the noise butmost of the older ones were awake and anxiousand needed soothing.Children's Reactions toBombsThe following stories record some recentsayings of our children concerning the subjectofwar.After three years of war the idea of fighting,killing, bombing etc. had ceased to besurprising or extraordinary. The existence ofthese activities isnow accepted by the childrenas an essential part of their picture of theworld.There are still some little ones to whom warmeans nothing, for example—Hilde, three anda half years old, who looks up into the sky andsays: "Looks at the nice aeroplane, I'd like tohave it for Xmas." But even at this age suchlack of understanding is exceptional.David, three and a half years old, com-176

alarm was given in the lastplained when thedaylight raid : "The sirens are eating me up."The remark shows his sensitiveness to thesound which, also for many adults, holds somethingof the threat contained in the howling ofa wild animal.His friend Dick of the same age explainsin answer: "The sirens are in the balloons"which sounds like a reminder of the manytheories about the hole of the balloons whichmany adults also held at the beginning of thewar.Whenever new alarms occur the older childrencome out with memories of past experiences.John, six years old, related one evening:"After the last war there was one street wheremy aunt lived and there were no houses left,all are bombed, only the house of my aunt isleft. And now they build new houses." Theterm "after the last war" refers in the children'slanguage to the period of the blitz beforeJohn came to us.Also Janet, five years old, likes to speakabout her past experiences. She says: "Oncethere dropped a bomb next to our house andwe had no shelter. So we all had to lie ontop of each other. First was my little sister,then I, then my mummy and daddy. I didnot like itat all." Then she continues, smiling:177

—"Do you remember the first night here whenwe all were so noisy that the Germans droppeda bomb on our house? But it was so very faraway. Do you know it still?"Janet's first part of the story is probably acorrect report of what had happened to hernearly two years ago, when she and her familyhad their house destroyed above them. Thesecond part of the story contains a mixture ofreal and imaginary elements of what happenedlast year. A stick of bombs was actuallydropped not on, but in the neighborhood ofthe Country House and not on the first night,but a little more than a week after the arrivalof the children there. This is a good exampleof a child's interpretation of such a happening.In Janet's mind the bomb was droppedas punishment because the children were toonoisy. Her smile and the contradiction in thestory itself "on our house, very far away"prove that Janet is herself well aware of herown additions to the truth.She herself had at the time commented, withevident relief, after the raid was over: "It wasa kind German, he did not drop the bomb onour house."Though this sounds like a rather alarmingnew conception of kindness—to drop bombs onother people's houses only—it means to Janetsomething completely different; the German178

omber had, in her conception, behaved as shehad known her parents to behave often; he hadthreatened punishment, had frightened her, butin the end had not carried out the threat.The night raid over the Country House producedan anxiety attack on John, six and ahalf years old. He is a typical example ofanxiousness in a child due to the nervousnessof the mother. His mother had developed anxietystates during the raids, had never goneto bed while an alarm lasted, had stood at thedoor trembling and insisted on the child's notsleeping either. John, then five years old, hadto get dressed, to hold her hand and to standnext to her. At the time he developed extremenervousness and bed wetting. He had quicklyimproved after separation from his mother andnot shown any unusual behavior in raids.Now after an interval of more than 18months he has attacks of anxiety which definitelyresemble those of his mother in all details.During the last raid, he woke up, wasfrightened, trembled and looked pale.He said: "I don't like bombs, why dothey drop bombs? Where are the children?"He was taken out of bed and shown the children."Where is Irene? Is Bertie in bed, IsGeorgie asleep? I want to see him!" Whenback in bed he suddenly whispered: "Is bigJohn still alive?"179

When asked why he worried about this,John said:"I saw his face."He meant he imagined seeing his face; Johnwas not in the room in reality.He continued to ask: "Is Sophie in thekitchen?"After the all clear he still wanted to betold what was going on outside. When helearned that British fighters had been huntinga German plane, and had probably got it, hewas not relieved.His worries finally transferred themselves tothe German pilot. "I would not like to see adead man, would you?" When told that theGerman airman might have been taken prisonerand not killed he protested: "He isnot anair-man, he is a Ger-man." For John, there areprobably two very different kinds of men, onegood, one bad and not to be confused with eachother.allAfter the night described above, for instance,the bigger children talked about the attackon their way to school.Only Katrina, eight years old, skipped alonghappily in front of the others and related aconversation she had just had with an oldgentleman, whom the children met every morning:"He said: 'Lovely morning' and I toldhim School is nice again." Katrina reportsthis and runs off again.180

Mary, ten years old, the eldest girl of thehouse shakes her head moodily at such gaiety.She says: "I do think. Katrina forgets thatthere's a war on."An absolutely practical and matter of factcomment was made the same morning by Janet,five years old.She said: "What is the good of the CountryHouse? They drop bombs in London and theydrop bombs in the Country."Children's Reaction toHitlerAn endless subject for talk which never failsto excite the imagination of the bigger childrenis Hitler's badness. The figure of Hitler isvivid to them not as that of a powerful enemybut as the incarnation of evil, i.e. a newedition of the devil.They never talk about the British fightingagainst the Germans but of a conflict betweenGod and Hitler. They are at the age whentheir own conflicts between good and bad arevery vivid to them, when at one moment theyare completely "bad" and at the next swingover to "goodness" and intolerance of the smallmisdeeds of the younger children. These innerconflicts form the basis of their interest inworld affairs. Katrina, eight years old has arestless evening and starts a long conversationbefore falling asleep.181

She says: "Teacher says there are angelsand once when we were in an air raid shelterthe Germans dropped bombs on us and wewere very frightened. There was a lady in theshelter and she said there is a man sitting inheaven and he puts his arms out and he hidesthe people so that the Germans cannot bombus. It is God. No German can do anything tous.Who made God? Who made everything?How did everything start?" She settles downto sleep but after a few minutes she is heardto laugh quietly to herself and then she whispers:"Could God get wicked one day?Wouldn't it be funny if God would get wickedand Hitler good?"It is easy to see that her own thoughts aboutGod come from another source and have littleor nothing in common with the teaching shereceives in school and the religious consolationheard in the shelter.John, six and a half years old, worries aboutthe same problems.After the groups of school children has disturbedthe younger ones with their noise heasked: "Why are we naughty? Who tells us tobe naughty?" and then smiling, "God tells us tobe naughty!" When somebody answered thatthis could surely not be so, John said promptly"But he made the Germans. Why did he makethem nasty Germans?"182

The same question of responsibility, this timenot for the naughtiness of the children but forthe outbreak of the war isrepeated in anotherconversation between John and Katrina.John says: "I think God said to Hitler thatthere should be a war."Katrina answered quickly and angrily:"Oh,no John."John notices that he has said the wrongthing, is frightened and asks Katrina very humbly,"What did he say then?"The same idea of God being responsible foreverybody good or bad is reflected in anotherconversation between Mary and Peggy andKatrina.They ask: "Whom willwar, Hitler or us?"God help to win theBefore anyone else can answer, Katrina answers:"God will help both Hitler and us,becauseHe likes all people."On the other hand, this idea of bad peoplebeing liked is insupportable to other children.Marion in a happy mood on the way homefrom school sings a little song of her own, "Ilike my Georgie and I like my Alice and Ilike everybody, everybody is good!"Janet interrupts her: "You don't like everybody,you don't likeHitler."Marion this time is too happy to argue itout. She says simply: "But Hitler is so far183

away." Which means at this moment her mindis not troubled by the dangers of badness.These stories only record thoughts of thechildren about one special subject. Their mindsare equally busy with the difficult questions ofdeath, birth, marriage and religion. They evenbecome conscious of the fact that they arethinking.Janet who is always the most explicit, remarkedthe other day: "Whenever I think, Ithink with my head, isn't it funny."184

CONCLUSIONSWhy are wartime nurseries so difficult torun? Do so much more thought, energy andmoney have to be spent on them than seemednecessary in former times?Nursery Schools have always been plannedas extensions of the home. They provide spacewhere the home is overcrowded, safety wherekitchens or streets are dangerous to play in,toys to be handled where family possessionshave to be respected, and attention and interestfrom the nursery teacher where mothers areoverworked and harassed. This was true ofthe proletarian nurseries in Middle Europeand in Russia. In America, on the other hand,where nurseries for the middle classes are noless frequent than elementary schools, they providethe community life for which the childisready, and which the small middle class familyis unable to give.In none of these cases were Nursery Schoolsmeant to substitute for the home, no more thana free milk scheme in schools is meant as asubstitute for home cooked meals, than welfareclinics do away with the need for the mother'scare, or child guidance clinics with the needfor educational efforts on the part of the185

parents. All these services were simply extensionsof the home, and they worked best whenallowed to function each as one link in a chainof public services for child welfare.We are all conscious of the fact that ourpresent situation is widely different. Familiesare dissolved, homes hardly recognizable assuch, many children scattered in billets, manyclinics closed. The Nursery schools, where theyexist,find themselves suddenly confronted withthe task of filling all these gaps, of fulfilling allthe functions of child welfare rolled into one.In wartime, the nursery, even if not residential,becomes a foster home. Since most childrenhave gone through long waiting periods beforeadmittance to a nursery, they are harmed insome way by the war conditions. That meansthat the nurseries have to admit children inweakened bodily condition, for instance, sheltersleepers of twelve months standing. They admitchildren who are shocked not so much bybombing, as by shelter life and war conditionsin the family. Which means that, besides theirprogram of ordinary education, they have tofulfill the functions of a convalescent home andschool for problem children. Such tasks canbe taken over wherever the doctor, the psychologist,teacher and nurse combine forces. It is,perhaps, not widely enough recognized thatthe most difficult of these various tasks is to186

—lessen the shock of the breaking up of familylife, and to find—during the absence from themother—a really good substitute for the motherrelationship.In this respect also many nursery schoolshave tried to do their best. Attempts have beenmade in many places to break up larger groupsinto smaller ones; to assign no more childrento one worker than would be natural in anordinary family; to let, as far as possible, thesame workers always handle the same children.I do not think that these attempts, necessaryas they are, have been completely successful.In residential nurseries, especially, noplanning of this kind does away with the factthat workers need off-hours during the day, offdaysduring the week, and have to have thenights to themselves. The mother relationshipin these early stages, on the other hand, is basedon a twenty-four hour attendance to the child'sneeds. Many children of two, when enteringthe nursery have never been separated fromtheir mothers for one day or night. Alsoworkers are not tied to their jobs as mothersare tied to their children. Wherever we basenursery work purely on the personal tie betweenthe individual child and the individualworker, we prepare the way for possible newshocks of separation, and for repeated disappointments.187

I have seen other nursery schools despair ofthese attempts. Instead of creating mother substitutes,they try to lay greater stress on the newand positive elements of nursery life itself.After all, the child gets more companionshipand social life than he would at home. Andwhat is lacking in mother's love might be givenin a general atmosphere of friendliness andaffection, in intelligent care and better educationalefforts than the untaught mother wouldhave been capable of.Ihave seen astonishingly few attempts madeto include the real mothers themselves in thelife of the nursery. There are very few nurserieswhere mothers' visits are welcome, whereefforts are made to bring home routine andnursery routine into one line. The danger evidentlyis not realised that the child who goesback and forth between home and nursery may,in the end, feel strange in both places. Evenin residential nurseries no material help isgiven to make mothers' visits more frequent; norto provide facilities to lengthen the durationof such visits.I once tried to explain to an official visitorwhy the nurseries I am connected with spenda good deal of time and planning on parents'visits, and gladly suffer every disturbance ofroutine to make the parents take their share inthe life of the nursery. My visitor said that,188af-

ter all, the children could not have everything."You can't have it all nice in a war." Thisevidently means that when the other needs ofthe child are provided for, love from the parentsis a luxury. It is certainly nice for thechild to have it, only wartime has temporarilydone away with that luxury as it has withothers.I had heard this same remark applied duringthe last war, referring to material things likesugar, fresh fruit and butter, of which continentalchildren were deprived. At that timethese things were considered luxuries. Sincethen, they have been recognized as body buildingmaterials. Today, all efforts are made toprovide children with sugar and vitamins; everybodyis afraid of the consequences causedby deficiencies in this respect. At some laterdate, when knowledge of the psychic needsof the child is more wide-spread, we shall bejust as frightened at the thought of the deficienciesin the child's psychic development whenevernecessary elements, like the "mother relationship,"are insufficiently existent in his earlyyouth.Today the knowledge that certain types ofmental maladjustment always coincide with thelack of an ordinary home life in the first fiveyears, is still restricted to a few psychiatrists andphychologists.189

The mother relationship of the small babyis still comparatively simple. The relationship isone-sided; the mother gives and the child receives.At that time it seems comparatively easyto exchange the person of the mother for anotherone—if this person takes over completely.But this primitive form of love relationshipchanges before the end of the first year. On thebasis of the "stomach love" the child developsa real attachment to the person of the mother.This new love of the child is personal, exclusive,violent, is accompanied by jealousies anddisappointments, can turn into hate and iscapable of sacrifice. It is directed first towardsthe person of the mother, slowly includes thefather, takes notice of brothers and sisters invarious ways, and leads the child into all thecomplications of early emotional life. If, at theheight of this development, the child is suddenlyremoved from all the people signficantfor him, he goes through a short period ofmourning. All his personal ties are broken.But since he ishelpless and absolutely dependenton the strangers who now take care of him,he is thrown back once more into the formerprimitive stage of "stomach love". He reactsonce more like a baby, i.e. at best to materialcomforts with material contentment.The emotional relations of the small childto his parents are of importance for his190

development in two main respects: One, thatthis childish love is the pattern for all laterlove relationships. The ability to love—likeother human faculties—has tobe learned andpracticed. Wherever, through the absence of orthe interruption of personal ties, this opportunityis missing in childhood, all later relationshipswill develop weakly, will remainshallow. The opposite of this ability to loveis not hate, but egoism. The feelings whichshould go to outside objects remain inside theindividual and are used up in self-love. Thisis not what we want to produce.The second aspect is of equal importance.It is this first love of the child which educationmakes use of. Education demands from thechild continuous sacrifices. The child has togive up his primitive habits, to become clean,to lessen his aggression, to restrict his greed,to renounce his first sexual wishes. He is readyto pay this price if he gets his parents' lovein return. If such love is not available, educationeither has to threaten or to drill or tobribe— all methods unsatisfactory in their results.therefore, will largely depend on whetherOur educational success in the war nurseries,we can succeed in creating, or conserving forthe children, their proper emotional relationshipswith the outside world.191

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